Have you heard of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC… Yes? No? Well, these are all Performing Rights Organizations, or PROs for short (pronounced P-R-O, not PRO). What are those, you ask?
Well, they are companies that represent songwriters and musicians probably similar to you who are emerging slowly and steadily onto the music scene, and they help them get the money they deserve for their music. How so?
Well, to put it very simply, if you are a songwriter, composer, or even a music publisher and you have copyrighted one or more of your songs, you now have rights over the public performance of said songs. And this is when PROs come in as they manage the licensing and collect royalties on your behalf. And good way of remembering what they have to do with copyright is to know that they are also called Copyright Collecting Agencies within the music industry. Indeed, we are entering the realm of copyright law. Easy peasy to remember now.
With all this already said, let’s take a deeper dive into the subject at hand and break it down further to fully understand how Performing Rights Organisations (PROs) can help you in your music career.
1. What exactly are performance royalties?
Chances are you’ve heard of something called « royalties ». It basically means the money that is owed to you for your music and as a working musician, you can have various types of royalties: mechanical royalties, synchronization royalties, print music royalties, digital performance royalties … and performance royalties which are the ones we are going to look at now because those are the ones PROs deal with.
Very simply put, if you are a songwriter or composer, you and your music publisher will get performance royalties anytime your song is made available to the public.
And that could mean public performances in the street, if your song is played in your local restaurant or on your favorite radio station, on various streaming services, or if it’s used in your favorite TV show… So as you can see, performance royalties are generated by a wide range of situations so let’s take a closer look at these in the next section.
2. What generates performance royalties?
Ok, what do we mean by « performance » when we talk of performance royalties? In other words, which situations generate the performance royalties that will be handled by PROs?
There are a number of situations that generate performance royalties but for the sake of keeping it simple, let’s put them into three big categories.
So these are three big ways where a performance royalty is triggered.
Digital streaming
So basically, whenever your song is played on any music streaming service, you will be owed royalties as the songwriter of that song, and the Performing Rights Organization (PRO) you are with will collect these on your behalf. This may seem quite odd as a digital streaming platform doesn’t really seem like it could fit under the umbrella term of « public performance » and they usually generate mechanical royalties. But the reason it does is because these music streaming services make the songs available to the public and so when there are songs played on these platforms, it is considered a public performance and it does generate performance royalties for the music creators. These music streaming services include Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora…
Public performances
Anytime your music is played or performed in a commercial environment, like in restaurants, department stores, sports arenas, amusement parks, in waiting rooms… performance royalties are generated. This means that the background music you hear in your favorite shop as you are browsing through clothes is usually copyrighted and that the shop owner has to pay a license that allows it to play music. Licensing fees will be decided and dealt with by the PROs on behalf of the copyright holders.
On top of that, any live performance in music venues like performance halls or public venues like the streets, of one of your songs generates performance royalties. And this is either if the song is played by yourself at the gig, aka the songwriter, or by someone else. In this last case, you are still owed performance royalties because you wrote the song or the musical compositions and the PROs you are signed with will collect these performance royalties.
Broadcasts
This is when your song is played on your favorite TV show, in a commercial, on a website, or on a radio station, be it AM, FM, or satellite. These are situations that are considered a public performance and therefore lead to public performance royalties for the music creators and the music publishers.
3. Ok, but with these performance royalties, what exactly does a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) do?
Ok, so we saw the situations that could give rise to performance royalties being owed to the songwriter. But how does this process actually work and where do the PROs fit in?
Simply put, they collect and distribute public performance royalties. Therefore, performance rights organizations (PROs) work as the middleman between the songwriters or music publishers in charge and the societies, streaming services, and broadcast entities that want to play the song. How it works is that these need to buy a license from your performance rights organization (PRO). The performing rights organization will then hand over the license and when that song is performed, the PRO will give you the money you deserve from that transaction.
So if we take the example of streaming services, they will sign licensing agreements with performing rights organizations (PROs) to obtain the rights to stream music and they will pay the PROs for the right to publicly perform the music in their catalog.
As a songwriter or music publisher (who will take his publisher’s share), you have to pay an administrative fee to the PRO you are signed with in return, but this means that you, as an individual songwriter or independent musician, don’t have to worry about tracking when and where your song is played because that’s what a PRO does for you.
So to conclude this section, if a streaming platform, a radio station, a theatre hall, or a TV station wants to use your songs, they will need to pay the performing rights organizations (PROs) license fees in order to have the rights to play those songs, whether it involves a public performance in an actual venue or if it’s more of a broadcasted public performance. This is often facilitated via a subscription, or blanket license, where businesses will pay for access to works represented by the PRO or by digital platforms reporting the use of music and paying royalties.
What’s more, is that a performance rights organization (PRO) can sometimes help an independent musician navigate his or her career more smoothly and they can even introduce them to other industry players and also help them with public performances. There are reasons to go with different ones but for the most part, they are all really good.
4. Which PRO should you register with?
Ok, onto the next question: songwriters and publishers or publishing companies, if you have some music out there and you think it’s a good idea to sign with a PRO, what PRO should you sign with to collect public performance royalties on your behalf?
As an individual songwriter, you only register with one individual PRO. But there isn’t much choice in the matter because PROs are by country. Essentially, most countries only have one PRO and you can easily find the information online depending on the country you live in.
For example, in Canada, it’s called SOCAN. In the UK, it’s PRS. There’s only in the USA where you have three to choose from: ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. SESAC focuses on certain clients and it’s even an invitation-only PRO.
So now that you have all of this information, make sure that you register with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) if you have any songs out there in the music scene because otherwise, you may not get the royalties that you are owed when said songs are performed publicly.
—
Get your music heard by media, radio stations, playlist curators and more 🔥
