By Nick Krewen
The top takeaway from the CISAC Global Collections Report released Thursday isn’t so much the amount of money collected over 2018, but the average payout that Canadian creators receive for digital revenue.
$54.
That’s right. Despite the fact that Canadian collections were up 3.9% year-on-year, totaling C$364M, and registered a 23.6% increase in digital revenue over 2017, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), which unites 239 collective management organizations in 122 countries and represents 4M creators in audiovisual, dramatic, literature, music and visual arts disciplines, SOCAN members took in $54 from digital resources.
While radio and TV broadcasters accounted for 53.8% of total collections, both mediums registered a 1% drop, with reprography (-7.6%), synchronization (-19.3%), and private copying (-69.2%) also offering diminishing returns.
Private copying revenues, in particular, have shrunk, from $4.9M in 2013 to $0.6M in 2018.
Overall, music accounted for 88% of the total collection, or $12.39B.
Other intriguing CISAC findings: Canada ranks 7th in global collections for music with a 2.8% share, but is places 5th by percentage share accounted for in digital music – 30.9%.
The surprise regarding the No. 5 ranking: the top countries in the categories are Mexico (with a 48.9% digital music share), Sweden (42.8%), Australasia (36.6%), and South Korea (34.8%).
At least we’re beating the States at something.
The other notable aspect of the CISAC Report is the acknowledgment of the April 2019 adoption of the European Copyright Directive.
If passed into legislation by members of the European Union, the Directive would, according to CISAC president Jean-Michel Jarre, "build a fairer balance between creators and the tech platforms" in terms of remuneration.
You can bet this will be watched closely by everyone.
