The International Confederation of Authors’ and Composers’ Societies (CISAC) has reported global collections worth €9.6 billion (currently $10.30 billion) for 2022, expressing the belief that “we’re going to be the next Paul McCartney will lose’ if we don’t take further steps to ‘create life’. Fair for creative people” in the streaming area and elsewhere.
CISAC, which comprises 227 societies (a net decrease of one resulting from the withdrawal of Russia’s UPRAVIS and others) from 118 countries and territories, has released the collection totals and other important information in its newly released 2023 Annual Report.
The aforementioned €9.6 billion represents a modest improvement over the €9.32 billion ($9.99 billion) in revenue identified by CISAC in its annual breakdown for 2022, but the total has yet to add up reported earnings of about 9.65 billion euros ($10.35 billion) recover for the pre-pandemic 2019 period.
Building on the stats, in this latest report, CISAC highlighted its efforts in 2022 to streamline operations and maximize collections in emerging markets, where data suggests streaming is growing in popularity.
“Can we have another Paul McCartney?” wrote CISAC President Björn Ulvaeus. “I hope we can — but it’s only going to happen if we make the streaming world a fairer place for creators today.” So much needs fixing. Let’s all go ahead and do it.”
And in terms of actually implementing these solutions, the 78-year-old ABBA founding member reiterated his position: “We need to accelerate the work to fix the metadata problem so that works can be properly identified and their creators paid fairly.”
“We’ve really picked up speed now. CISAC’s updated ISWC has seen increased adoption and use by publishers and DSPs, and new collaborative projects by societies have emerged,” wrote Ulvaeus, whose organization is said to have expanded its ISWC Resolution Service to 11 publishers so far.
The Resolution Service was developed to enable these publishers to check their own databases against CISAC’s comprehensive ISWC offering (and thereby fill in missing information). According to the Paris-based company, the Resolution Service processed 3.6 million submissions in 2022 and 1.5 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone.
Likewise, 22 publishers use CISAC’s “allocation service,” which allocates ISWCs “once the publisher has the title and list of songwriters with them.” IP name numbers‘ the document says. 432,000 ISCWs were allocated through the tool (which nine societies have implemented) last year, CISAC said.
Referring to collections progress in specific countries and regions, CISAC cited the 16.4 million euros ($17.59 million) that Greece’s AUTODIA reportedly raised in 2022 — a 68 percent year-on-year increase and more than the incredible 4,000 percent since 2017.
“AUTODIA is convinced that Greece remains an underperforming market with significant potential for further growth.” CISAC wrote. “Collections could double within the next few years and exceed 30 million euros ($32.18 million).”
Meanwhile, the nearly centenary organization also addressed what appeared to be encouraging initial results from Turkey’s MSG and MESAM, which were expelled from CISAC in 2021 and reinstated in June 2022. In addition, the Indian IPRS, which resumed at the end of 2018, is said to have doubled its membership (to around 9,000) and revenues by around 525 percent to around 35 million euros/37.55 million US dollars have increased.