2.0 Self Administration

This is the process of exploiting copyright without appointing a publisher (and through that publisher various overseas subpublishers) but instead by becoming a member of the local collection societies. In most major territories this is now a reasonably simple procedure although it is often helpful to employ an agent in the local territory to deal with the formalities.

There are significant advantages in the selfadministration approach. The first is that the copyright owner will bear the commission only of the local society and will not bear additional commission of a UK collection society or subpublisher. The second is that the copyright owner will receive any applicable funds immediately those funds are distributed by the local society and there will be no further delay whilst the funds are processed by a third party. Thirdly, membership of the local societies will normally bring with it the privilege of qualifying for a share of “black box” income. So called “black box” income is mainly comprised of income obtained by the local societies by virtue of various blanket licensing agreements under which, for example, perhaps a television company pays a substantial fee for the privilege of performing all the musical works controlled by the society in question. Blanket licences of this kind are issued in the UK but, for example, the PRS has a reasonably sophisticated system which enables it to identify particular uses so that PRS’s income may sensibly be distributed between the specific titles controlled by the PRS. Many overseas countries (most notably Italy) are far less sophisticated so that the societies end up with vast amounts of money which they are unable or unwilling to attribute to any particular song. This money (or part of it) is therefore distributed between its various publisher members (and those publisher members generally retain their share in any black box distribution for their own use and benefit without sharing this with their writers.) The publisher member’s entitlement to a share of black box income often increases with the length of time the publisher has been a member.

One disadvantage of self administration is that the societies do not generally pay advances. Moreover, it is the publisher’s responsibility to notify the local societies of the compositions in respect of which it wishes the society to make claims and the publisher is responsible for checking its own statements. To undertake these tasks effectively the publisher needs to have a reasonably sophisticated administrative system and thus may have to maintain a higher overhead cost than would otherwise be the case. Further, under self administered arrangements there will be no local promotion of the catalogue. One way around this would be to hire one or more people to undertake specific promotional tasks but the writer would need to assess whether the cost of doing this means that he or she is able still to justify direct membership or whether he or she would be better off paying commission to a sub-publisher.

In view of the complexities, only a very successful writer with a considerable turnover would normally consider self administration.