The latest financial postings by rights management and royalties collectors APRA AMCOS (for the 2017/18 financial year) set a new record. It cracked the $400 million milestone, reaching $420.2 million, a rise of 8.2% from the year before. But more significantly, for the first time ever, royalties for Australian songwriters and composers came from digital sources exceeding those from TV and radio. Facebook has played a big role in this.
Digital sources generated $134.5 million, up 21.9%. It pipped the combined $132.6 million from television ($85.7 million) and radio ($46.9 million) which jointly grew 5.8% from the year before. The growth of streaming has seen more songwriters get paid, to 47,468 of APRA AMCOS’ 100,000 Australian and New Zealand members. The number of works eligible for royalties rose 10% to 1,441,485.
A breakdown of digital royalties saw $81.9 million in audio streaming (up 31.9%) from the likes of Spotify and Apple Music making up the bulk. Video-on-demand from the likes of Netflix and Stan expanded 30.5% to $18.4 million and websites and User Generated Content (UGC) jumped 30.4% to $21.9 million.
APRA AMCOS’ attributes the growth of UGC royalties to its landmark licensing agreement with Facebook, struck on August 15 this year. This was the first time that Facebook paid up. According to APRA AMCOS, the Facebook deal “opened up a game-changing revenue stream that will see Australian, New Zealand and international songwriters and music publishers remunerated for the use of their music on Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and Messenger. The deal also enables the platform’s users to incorporate music into content in a variety of dynamic and, importantly, legal ways.”
Apart from getting money out of Facebook, the deal also called for APRA AMCOS to work with Facebook to make its royalty reporting better.
Facebook, after all, is a big cheese in terms of players. In the second quarter of 2018, 2.23 billion people from around the world were using it each month. Further statistics are 1.15 billion daily users access through mobile, the largest age group to use it is the 25—34 demo who make up 29.7% of users), more females than males use it, and highest traffic occurs mid-week between 1pm and 3pm.
Australian songwriters also received more royalties from live music and international sales. Moolah from live music was up 24% to $25.3 million after already expanding by 15.9% the year before. Publishing revenue from international sources catapulted an impressive 105% over the past five financial years, with $43.7 million collected in 2017-18.
APRA AMCOS chief executive Dean Ormston made this important point: “While these results are strong, there is a real need to consider the longer term sustainability of the Australian music industry. This will be achieved through proactive government and industry policy and investment that prioritises a fair copyright framework, music in education, a strong live music touring circuit, Australian music content, and music export.”
