Songwriter collecting societies brought in 7.6% more money last year, with total worldwide revenues of €11.75 billion, according to CISAC. That’s up around €830 million compared to 2022, with the boost driven by a booming live music sector, alongside steady growth in digital.
The live sector at large has now fully recovered from the COVID pandemic, meaning that the royalties received by writers and publishers from the performance of music hit €3.06 billion, a 21.8% increase on 2022, and 12.7% more than in 2019. Performance revenues obviously took a major hit during the pandemic as live music shutdown and businesses that play music in public couldn’t open.
“The live and public performance income stream has bounced back buoyantly”, says Gadi Oron, Director General of CISAC, which brings together stats from all the songwriter societies around the world in its ‘Global Collections Report’.
That means, he goes on, “for the first time, the amounts collected by CISAC societies for background music, live concerts, exhibitions and entertainment exceeded their 2019 pre-COVID level, fuelled by the growing number of live concerts and tours around the world”.
It was live music in particular that had a good year. While live and public performance income at large was up 21.8%, a review of 100 societies discovered that “collections from live concerts and festivals grew 36.5%, and public performance licensing revenue rose by a smaller 10.9%”.
While live and public performance had impressive growth, it is the third biggest revenue generator overall, accounting for 26.1% of the money. Digital income accounts for 38.5% and broadcast 28.7%.
Income from digital platforms overtook TV and radio as the biggest revenue generator in 2022, and the margin between the two grew last year. Broadcast collections fell by 5.3% to €3.37 billion and are now 0.8% below pre-pandemic levels. CISAC says that’s because of a “fall in viewer numbers and TV advertising income”.
Those viewers spending less time consuming traditional linear TV and radio are instead spending more time consuming content from streaming services - whether that’s music streaming services like Spotify, short-form video platforms like Instagram, or video streaming services like Netflix - all of which fall under the digital revenue stream category.
Digital income across all those types of platforms was up by 9.6% to €4.52 billion, with the growth “largely driven by continued organic expansion of music streaming and subscription services, helped by increases in subscription prices and new and renewed deals with global streaming platforms”.
Not all broadcast and digital income flows through the collecting societies. In TV, publishers negotiate direct sync deals, especially in the US. With digital, many publishers negotiate direct deals with streaming services that cover Anglo-American repertoire and, where that happens, some of the money goes direct to the publisher and is therefore not captured in the CISAC data.
In the US, mechanical royalties due from streaming flows through the MLC, which is not a CISAC member, so again that income is not captured in these figures.
Nevertheless, the trends we see in the CISAC report are still valid across the sector, however digital probably accounts for an even bigger portion of total songwriter and publisher revenues than its figures suggest.
Beyond digital, broadcast and performance, other income included in the CISAC figures comes from things like private copying, public lending and the royalties due on physical product.
The mechanical royalties paid to writers and publishers on CD and vinyl sales were up 6% to €380 million, reflecting the growth we’ve seen in physical income on the recordings side. Those physical product royalties now account for 3.2% of the total collected by the CISAC member societies.
While digital now brings in the most money for both songs and recordings, many songwriters and publishers still believe songs are undervalued in streaming, and should get a bigger share of the money. When a track is streamed the owner of the recording makes up to four times more money than the owners of the underlying song, which many argue is unfair.
That’s an issue that was raised earlier this week in the manifesto published by pan-European songwriter group ECSA. The CISAC report also stresses that many writers don’t really feel the benefit of the streaming boom.
“Digital music, as an income source for millions of creators, is still severely underperforming on a global basis”, it says. “The streaming model rewards a relatively small share of songwriters and composers, benefiting mostly those with well-established revenue streams from other sources, such as live concerts. Although the total collections sum has seen healthy growth, the number of recipients is substantially growing, most of whom are not able to make a sustainable living from music”.
And the positive stats in live music also don’t reflect the challenges many are facing in the live sector, which is something Oron notes. Despite the growth in concert royalties, he says, “the sector is fragmented and, in many areas, fragile - at the grassroots level, venues are closing and local events struggling”. To that end, he adds, “support from governments to protect the live sector has never been more important”.