International collective management organisation Sacem achieved record revenues in 2016 and returned more money to its members than ever before.
Last year saw Sacem deliver record royalty distributions of €1.2 billion, while collections rose 3.9% to a new high of €1.4bn. Total collections rose 3.9% year on year to €1.37bn.
Revenue collected on behalf of Sacem’s members saw an uplift of 2.6% year-on-year, to reach €884.3m,.
Meanwhile, revenue collected on a mandate basis on behalf of other rights-holders experienced an uptick of 6.5% to €486.7m. In addition, distribution revenues collected on a mandate basis climbed 1.9% in 2016 to €1.21 billion. Significantly, Sacem’s annual earnings report also revealed a 42.6% spike in online revenue collected, with 2.6 trillion usage data points processed in 2016.
Elsewhere, Sacem membership figures lifted 2.4% to 161,170, while revenue from private copying rose 6.1% to €82.8 million.
Furthermore, €57.7m was invested by the organisation in almost 2,000 creative and cultural sustainability projects and social aids, ensuring the longer term future for music
Jean-Noël Tronc, CEO of Sacem, commented: "This was a landmark year for Sacem as we continued to work tirelessly on behalf of our members to ensure efficient and accurate collection and distribution of royalties on their behalf. Not only have we collected record revenues for our members and distributed record royalties to them, we have done so while ensuring a sustainable future for our members and other creators around the world by investing in innovative strategic initiatives such as our partnership with IBM. We have also improved our operational processes to be able to distribute collections to our members and commercial partners more quickly.
“The rapid growth in revenues from online confirms the importance of creating a world class technology platform to ensure we maximize the opportunities for our members and partners from online music distribution. The URights platform we are developing will enable us and other rights-holders that partner with us to handle the explosive growth in online data, to track and capture the value from online on behalf of creators.
“Our passionate approach to digital innovation and our commitment to provide an efficient, transparent service means we are a partner of choice for other rights-holders worldwide, from publishers like UMPI and Wixen Publishing to other collective management organisations like SOCAN.
“We look forward to further expanding our international reach in the years ahead, as we leverage our partnerships and digital capabilities to maximise value and opportunity for all our members and the other rights-holders we represent.”
