From Artist to Audience - Collective Management of Copyright

From Artist to Audience, a WIPO booklet produced in cooperation with the International Confederation of Societies of Authors (CISAC) and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), aims to answer some of these questions by exploring one way in which the copyright and related rights system works, namely through the collective management of rights.

Collective management organizations are professional organizations established by authors and artists in various fields to manage their copyrights, to facilitate clearance of those rights, and to ensure that they obtain the payments to which they are entitled. From Artist to Audience provides a simple introduction to how collective management organizations work in regard to key cultural industries, including music and sound recordings; print and publishing; film and television; visual arts; and theatre.

Music, for instance, is perhaps the most universal of all copyright-based creative expressions. With music on radio alone accounting for over 70 percent of airtime, it would be close to impossible for individual broadcasters to clear the rights with each and every copyright owner. So collective management organizations, or performing rights societies, act as intermediaries between the rights holders and the users, managing the licensing of musical works, collecting the payments and passing them back to the musicians or copyright holders. This makes it easy for users to get permission to play music in many different places. By establishing a network of...