Performing Rights Royalties are royalties paid to a songwriter when one of their songs is played live. A live performance of a song doesn’t have to mean strictly a performance in a concert setting.
A live performance of a song can also mean a public airing of a recorded version of a song, like a radio play, television play, etc. Every time a song is played publicly, the songwriter is due a performance rights royalty.
What are Performing Rights Royalties?
Performance royalties are generated when a song is “publicly performed” – broadcast on radio or television or played in restaurants, bars, or nightclubs. Performance royalties are also generated when your song is performed live (whether by you or another performer), and when it is played on certain forms of digital media, like online radio stations.
If someone wants to use your composition for commercial use, they need a license to do so. Obviously, it’s not possible to have every broadcast and performance run by you first. Instead, businesses like radio stations or concert venues pay blanket licenses to Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), who then redistribute those license fees to their members.
What is a Performing Rights Organization (PRO)?
So, what’s a performing rights organization? A Performance Rights Organization, otherwise known as a Performing Rights Organization or PRO is an organization collecting royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers; building a link between the owners of composition copyright and the music users (from radios and streaming services to your local business broadcasting music in the store.
Who are the PROs?
The biggest names in PROs in the United States are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. In Canada, there is SOCAN; while in the United Kingdom, we have the PRS.
In Nigeria, Musical Copyrights Society of Nigeria (MCSN) collects Performance Right Royalties for a range of uses of Musical Composition in Nigeria.
Musical Copyrights Society of Nigeria (MCSN) is governed by the Copyrights Acts (Cap C. 28 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN 2004) and an approved collecting management organization (CMO) on the statutory authority of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) as directed by the Hon. Attorney General of the Federation and as adjudicated upon by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
We represent and license performing rights in the underlying Composition of Musical works on behalf of our Members (songwriters, composers, lyricists, music publishers, and publishing administrators) for the public performance and broadcast of their works (e.g. when their songs are played on the internet or terrestrial radio, online, performed at live venues or clubs, played in business premises as background music or broadcast on TV).
MCSN collects and pays out performing royalties when works are:
- performed live
- broadcast on TV or radio
- played in public
- streamed online
- used in film
How do Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) get paid?
Any commercial premises that publicly play music must first purchase a license from a PRO to do so. This means restaurants, music venues (bars, amphitheaters, performance halls, etc.), sports arenas, stores, shopping malls, amusement parks, airports, hospitals, and any other public place that plays music must purchase a license from the PROs in order to play that music. That licensing fee is paid out by the PRO as a performance royalty to songwriters and rights holders (publishing companies).
However, regardless of the exact royalty type(s) managed by the PRO (or, should we say, CMO), the principal functions and duties of such bodies remain the same. Those are:
- Licencing the use of the rights they manage to music users
The first step of unlocking the potential royalties is actually licensing the composition’s use. Depending on the type of music user, this process can be very different. Radio broadcasters, for example, get blanket licenses, allowing them to play virtually all music in the world based on a flat yearly fee paid to their local PRO.
The licenses for streaming services, on the other hand, are defined in the process of negotiation between publishers, PROs, and legislative bodies like NCC in Nigeria. Generally speaking, the license fees here are calculated as a percentage of the streaming service’s revenue — and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a PRO that issues the license.
- Monitoring the licensed use in order to enforce the conditions upon which the license has been granted
Pretty much any license, issued by a PRO will oblige the music user to report their “broadcasts” back to the PRO. Those reports can take various shapes or forms, depending on the type of use: broadcast logs for radio broadcasters, cue sheets for TV channels, set-lists for live venues, and consumption reports for streaming services. However, none of those reporting systems are perfect.
Radio broadcast logs are full of corrupted metadata and human errors — so the PROs usually combine the radio reports with airplay tracking data to get a report of the local airplay. And even going through all those hoops, PROs are never able to get complete data on all music used in the country.
- Collecting and distributing the royalties payable as a result of the authorized use
Then, finally, the PRO will use the data collected to distribute the money it receives from music users to the proper songwriters.
On paper, most PROs in the world have long-established partnerships between themselves, exchanging royalties and usage reports to connect the airplay in one country to a songwriter in another. So, technically, it’s enough to register with a single PRO to get money flowing from all over the globe (given there’re some). In practice, however, this international PRO network doesn’t work all that well — which means that songwriters (or their publishers) have to register with ALL the PROs across the globe to maximize the royalties — and then access global usage data to claim.
Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) is affiliated and can claim Perorming royalties in over 100 other countries.
What Performing Royalties Are Not
Performance royalties are easily confused with other kinds. Becoming familiar with the following music usages and their key differences can help you get the most out of your relationship with your PRO.
- Performance royalties are not mechanical royalties, which you’re owed whenever your music is pressed onto a physical object like a CD, DVD, or vinyl record.
- Performance royalties are not synchronization (or sync), which occurs whenever your song is on the soundtrack of a film, TV show, or any performance with a script.
- Performance royalties are not digital royalties, which you receive when web radio providers like Pandora and Sirius XM stream your music for the public.
Publishers Vs. Writers
The first step to joining a PRO is to sign up as either a writer, a publisher, or both. Though these terms can be a bit confusing, they’re not as complicated as they seem. To properly define them, we must talk a bit more about music copyrighting.
Whenever a song is released, it generates two copyrights: copyright for composition and copyright for the sound recording. The composition deals with the melodies and lyrics that constitute the core of the song (i.e. elements that exist across nearly every arrangement). Meanwhile, the sound recording pertains to a specific version (or master recording) of a track. This means if you were to remix your latest single and simply changed the instrumentation, it would technically be considered an entirely new sound recording, but the same composition.
PROs deal in the composition side of a song. These royalties are split amongst its writers (songwriters and producers), and publishers (people who legally own the rights to the composition). If you’re a DIY solo artist, you likely play all three roles. If you’re in a band, frequently collaborate, or are signed to a label that owns a certain percentage of your music, the lines between the roles will be more blurred.
Why should artists use a PRO?
All artists should register with MCSN to get paid in full for the use of their music in Nigeria. While your label or distributor covers master royalties, we cover the collection and payment of your public performance royalties.
Are you a songwriter who needs someone to make sure your performance rights royalties are being properly collected? You may want to join MCSN!
