Performing Artists Rights and their collective management societies

Performers' rights have been consecrated only recently by national laws. Yet, they are developing rapidly due to the entrepreneurial talents of performers’ collective management societies, which play an essential role as concerns the rationalisation of the management of performing artists’ rights. In fact, the very many different ways to exploit the performances nowadays, make it impossible that one performer could manage alone the exploitation of his works or performances. Moreover the management of the rights requires an administrative structure of collection and distribution demanding sophisticated information systems that only the collective management can ensure at reasonable costs for every performer and not just for the richest ones.

Collective management societies are also vital to the whole cultural industry. Collective licensing has many benefits for members, users and consumers. These include market access, reduced administration, greater efficiency and cost savings.

A lot of work remains still to be done, however, to ensure that performers’ intellectual property rights are widely recognised and protected within the European Union and internationally.

Particularly, with the development of new digital services, performing artists will depend more and more on the income arising from on-line exploitations. The development of a collective management system in the online music market is crucial for the performers.

So far, the solutions found as concerns global licensing however, are not satisfactory for performers’ societies. In this context, GIART and its member societies are studying solutions as concerns the creation of one-stop-shop for performers rights without obliging the different collective management societies to compete among themselves on management costs, for example. The risk, in fact, would be that such a competition will have as an effect to reduce performers’ revenues and to provoke the death of the collecting societies with less turnover (in general in the smaller EU territories).