A group of organisations representing artists and record labels around Europe have called on the European Union to come forward with a flexible solution to a problem created in a 2020 court case involving Irish performer collecting society RAAP.
In a joint statement those organisations say that, without such a solution, performers and labels in some European countries could see their income from the broadcast and public performance of recordings fall by up to 40%.
This is all related to the way collective licensing works. Each of the record industry’s collecting societies signs up members and issues licences in its home country, collecting money from broadcasters and businesses that play music in public.
If licensees then play music from artists or labels based in another country, the society will usually pass the money they are due over to that other country’s collecting society. This means that rights and royalties constantly flow around a global network of societies.
However, there are circumstances when that might not happen. For example, under US copyright law, American broadcasters don’t pay any royalties to the record industry, so there is no money to flow from the US to other countries. Therefore, in some countries, local collecting societies don’t pass any money over to the US even when American music is used.
That is known as the ‘reciprocity’ approach and it used to be employed in some European countries. However, in the RAAP case, the EU courts ruled that it’s not allowed under European copyright law, even though EU law is actually silent on this point.
Ever since, some industry groups in affected countries have called on the European Commission to clarify the law in this domain, so that EU countries can employ the ‘reciprocity’ approach if they so wish. Otherwise, all European societies will have to start sending money to the US.
But so far the EC has not obliged. Which is why performer unions and collecting societies in France, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands - as well as pan-European indie label trade group IMPALA - have now put out this joint call for action from EC officials.
“With today’s call”, they say, “[we] are urging the EU to come forward now with a flexible solution that will allow, but not oblige, member states to apply material reciprocity".