Collective management through organizations like TONO has been the most fruitful model for balancing the interests of creators against users for a hundred years, writes communications manager Willy Martinsen in this comment.
/ 22/03/2021 / Willy Martinsen
As a TONO member, you are part of something bigger than yourself. Over time, TONO has grown by around 1600 members a year, and earlier this winter we reached the milestone of 36,000 in total. That's good. Together we are strong.
Standing stronger together has been the basic idea ever since the six composers on the board of the Norwegian Composers' Association and two music publishers established TONO almost a hundred years ago, in November 1928. Individually, each rights holder is in a nearly hopeless situation when dealing with music users. However, when authors and music publishers pool their repertoires, they gain a better negotiating position when dealing with music users, while also achieving efficiency gains and other economies of scale.
We at TONO's administration can, based on collective management, offer a single repertoire consisting of the music of TONO members and the music created by authors from other countries to radio and TV companies, concert organizers, cinemas, restaurants and so on. This gives those who want to use music public access to practically the world's repertoire in one and the same agreement. This provides clear advantages, not only for the rights holders and their negotiating position, but also for the users. For them, collective management means a customer-friendly, efficient and cost-effective solution, for example, in that they do not have to contact each individual rights holder before playing a song.
TONO members should not think too much about getting the money, that is TONO's job. We can nevertheless reveal that it is not uncommon for it to be a tough ride. Some believe, quite strongly, that the music of TONO members is worth less than what we and our members believe. Some music users attack the very basic ideas, for example by arguing against the fact that TONO, which, like fitness centers, online newspapers, streaming services and so on, charges for access and not unit price.
Some media houses and production companies try to spend as little money as possible on music by using so-called "royalty free" music. Some members, especially those who create music for film and TV productions in an international market, are being pressured to sell their music at a one-off price - outside the TONO system. Such "buy outs" mean that the authors do not receive any financial gain from any future success their music may contribute to. At the same time, collective management and the situation of rights holders in general are weakened.
We also see that a service like Bandcamp requires its users not to be members of artists' organizations like TONO. In doing so, they absolve themselves of the responsibility of entering into agreements with the artists' organizations. This means that songwriters do not get paid by the service when other artists record and publish their music there - even though both the artist and the service make money from it. Not least, it implies something as unsolidaristic as the service does not grant its users collective management, so that they can be paid TONO remuneration when their music is played at a concert, on the radio, TV, in the cinema or in other contexts.
Collective management has been the most fruitful model for balancing the interests of authors against those of users for a hundred years. Although TONO's tariffs hold up well in a global context, it is a continuous battle to fight for what the Copyright Act calls "fair remuneration". TONO members can be assured that hard work is being done for the rights holders, both in the governing committees and in the administration. And don't forget that you who are TONO members are represented both in TONO's board and all of them other governing committees.
We would like to draw your special attention to a page we have recently established here at tono.no. It is called «cultural assets». Here you will find an overview of a wide range of searchable schemes that you should be aware of as a TONO member. These schemes exist because of the collective management idea that forms the basis of TONO.