What Performance Rights Organizations Do: How a PRO Can Maximize Your Royalties 

Performance Rights Organizations (or simply PROs) are a staple of the music publishing pipeline, an integral part of the value chain for songwriters and composers. The livelihood of millions of authors all over the globe depends on those collection societies — yet, there’s a great deal of confusion in the music industry when it comes to pinpointing what precisely those bodies do and how they operate. 

So, what are the roles of a PRO? How are they different from CMOs — or MROs, for that matter (ye, the music industry made up a bunch of names for collection societies). But don’t worry — today, we’ll get to the bottom of it. 

What is a performing rights organization?

So, what’s a performing rights organization? Generally speaking, 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. Technically speaking, PROs are just a subset of a broader landscape of collective management organizations (or CMOs), that deals primarily with royalties due for the public broadcast of music works. 

On paper, there are quite a few different types of CMOs around the globe: PROs, collecting public performance royalties, MROs, collecting mechanical royalties, or even purpose-specific collection organizations, like Chinese CAVCA, dealing exclusively with royalties generated by karaoke performances.

However, a lot of the time, you can put an equal sign between CMO and PRO. You see, the set up of the rights management system in a given country is a subject of its local legislation. In the US, for example, there are:

• Three competing PROs (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC) 
• A separate MRO, dedicated to mechanical royalties collection (The HFA, acquired by SESAC in 2015)
• A dedicated CMO, collecting digital performance royalties from webcasters (SoundExchange) 
• A digital collection society, collecting performance and mechanical royalties from streaming services across the globe (AMRA)

Admittedly, the latter deals with royalties due to recording artists (owners of the master copyright), and not songwriters, which are the main focus of the article. But even if we SoundExchange out of their picture, we’re still left with four different CMOs operating in one country. In the meantime, in most countries around the globe, there’s just a single body, dealing with ALL the royalties on the composition side. In France, for example, SACEM collects both public performance and mechanical royalties as a unified, all-purpose CMO in the country.

Technically, that’s what SACEM should be called — a CMO — but, as usual, the music industry likes to play loose with its terms. So, such unified collections societies are often still referred to as PROs, ignoring the fact that they also collect mechanical royalties, and creating a great deal of confusion along the way. So, as you can see, pinpointing the exact meaning of the term “PRO” is not that simple. 

Which royalties do PROs collect?

Now, as you can see, the answer to the question of what types of royalties are collected by a particular PRO is a question of what is the PRO we’re talking about. In general, all of them collect public performance royalties due to songwriters for the public performance of their music in any sort of commercial environment. Then, depending on whether or not there’s a specific separate body dealing with mechanical royalty collection (like the HFA in the US), your local PRO may or may not also process the mechanical royalties generated whenever the copyrighted composition is reproduced and distributed. 

The duties of a performing rights society 

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
• Monitoring the licensed use in order to enforce the conditions upon which the license has been granted
• Collecting and distributing the royalties payable as a result of the authorized use

Let’s break it down in more detail:

Issuing Licenses 

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 CRB in the US. 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. Huge publishing companies, like Sony ATV or Warner Chappell, license their catalog directly to the likes of Spotify, sidestepping the PRO system altogether. 

Tracking the use

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.

In the US, only top-200 highest-grossing live venues (identified by Pollstar) report the songs played to the PROs, which then extrapolate that data on the entire live venue landscape. 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. 

Distributing Royalties

Then, finally, the PRO will use the data collected to distribute the money it receives from music users to the proper songwriters. However, the short falling of the usage reporting system we’ve outlined above often means that if the songwriters want to maximize their royalties and claim 100% of what they owed, they have to fight for it — or find someone who will do it for them. That’s the whole point of publishing administration: auditing royalty reports received from the PROs, tracking the copyrighted use of the compositions, and claiming the royalties due. That is no small feat, even if you talk about a single market. 

Now, think about what it takes to claim the royalties of a prominent international artist. 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. 

That is one of the reasons we’ve built a global airplay tracking solution into Soundcharts, covering more than 1,800 radio stations in 69 countries to provide publishers — as well as promoters, labels and artist managers — with reliable, real-time radio airplay reports. 

The 10 top PROs in today’s music industry

Now, to talk of the international network of PROs — we’ve decided to provide you with an extensive list of organizations around the world. Here are some of the organizations you ought to get familiar with:

1. ASCAP

Country: United States

Type: PRO

ASCAP, or American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, is one of the two most significant PROs on the US market. Representing over 700k songwriters, composers, and music publishers, ASCAP claims to license a catalog of over 11.5 million compositions. Established back in 1914, ASCAP is considered to be the first-ever organization, set out to protect the rights of composers and collect public performance royalties on their behalf 

2. BMI

Country: United States 

Type: PRO 

Claiming over 800k members, BMI (or Broadcast Music, Inc.) is ASCAP’s biggest competitor on the American market. Founded in 1939, throughout the 20th century, BMI has built a reputation as a supporter for all new genres of music — from jazz and rock’n’roll in the 50th. Today, they are the biggest PRO on the market, representing a catalog of over 15 million compositions.

3. SESAC

Country: United States

Type: PRO + MRO (through its affiliation with the HFA)

Established in 1930, SESAC is considered a staple of the US publishing industry. The organization puts a spin on the traditional PRO model. First of all, unlike BMI and ASCAP, SESAC is a for-profit organization — retaining a part of the royalties collected as profits. Second, (and again, as opposed to BMI and ASCAP) SESAC doesn’t have an open membership — one must be approved to join the PRO. Counting 30,000 members, SESAC focuses on representing a limited but high-profile catalog. Besides, back in 2015, SESAC has acquired the Harry Fox Agency, the only fully-fledged MRO in the country — effectively becoming the first licensing body in the US to offer both public performance and mechanical licenses to music users. 

4. AMRA

Country: United States/Global

Type: Digital Collection Society (managing streaming publishing royalties)

A bit of a new kid on the block, AMRA was founded in 2014 to build a new type of collection society for the streaming era. Focused on collecting royalties from streaming services, AMRA has set out to create a single body that would collect royalties directly from streaming services all over the world, bypassing that disconnected global PRO network we’ve mentioned. Acquired by Kobalt back in 2015, AMRA has yet to prove itself, but we’ll have to admit — the current system is far from ideal, so there’s definitely room for disruption. 

5. MSCS

Country: China 

Type: All-In-One CMO

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who read our analysis of the Chinese music market — the publishing industry in the country is still very, very young. The copyright legislation, though fully established by 2001, was largely ignored in China up until the government’s crackdown of 2015. As a result, the MSCS, China’s all-in-one CMO, reportedly collects less than 5% of potential royalties in the country. However, as the Chinese government seems to take music copyrights seriously in the last couple of years, that situation might change — and fast. 

6. JASRAC

Country: Japan 

Type: All-In-One CMO (pretty much)

Established back in 1939, JASRAC is a single most prominent CMO on the Japanese market, reportedly holds over 98% of the market, essentially making it the single CMO in Japan. Pretty much every songwriter in Japan entrusts their rights to JASRAC — either directly or through their musical publishers. Another exciting thing about JASRAC is that a bulk of the royalties collected by the society comes from the karaoke — which is a massive, $5 billion market in the land of the rising sun. More on this (as well as other trends of the world’s second music market) in our Market Focus: Japan. 

7. GEMA

Country: Germany

Type: All-In-One CMO

A government-mandated collection society in Germany, GEMA represents and licenses the complete set of rights of songwriters on the market — from public performance to mechanical and beyond. Counting over 60,000 members, it’s the only CMO in the country. 

8. IPRS

Country: India

Type: All-In-One CMO

In India (the country where over 80% of music consumption is attributed to quote-on-quote Bollywood music) up until 2012, the music copyright law assigned copyrights to film producers instead of the actual songwriters. That meant that most of the musical compositions were essentially a “work for hire” scenario, with the songwriter getting none of the rights (and none of the royalties). As a result, the publishing industry in India is still very much in the cradle — accounting for less than 1% of the total music market. Since 2012, however, the situation has changed, and IPRS took the lead in the reform process, with the organizations’ revenue growing more than 200% year on year. 

9. PRS for Music 

Country: United Kingdom

Type: All-In-One CMO

PRS for music started its journey back in 1997, when the two leading British collection societies — Performance Rights Society (PRO) and Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MRO), formed “MCPS-PRS Alliance” to create a one-stop CMO on the UK Market. Still keeping a certain degree of autonomy, the organizations have merged their brands under the banner of PRS for Music, and essentially became a single CMO covering the entire market on both public performance and mechanical sides or composition royalties. 

10. SACEM 

Country: France

Type: All-In-One CMO

Much like GEMA in Germany, SACEM is a single instituted body in charge or representing the rights of songwriters and publishers on the French market. With over 160K songwriter- and 6K publisher members, SACEM is one of the leading CMOs in continental Europe.

Conclusion

So, the landscape of the Performance Rights Organization is, in fact, much more complicated than it seems at first glance. Several types of Collective Management Organizations are often put in the PRO bucket, and it’s vital for any music professional to get familiar with the composition of that royalty management system — at least in their country. Understanding the scope and the respective roles of those organizations is a key to maximizing your royalty streams if you, in one way or another, work with composition copyrights.