New rules and procedures related to invoicing major online customers, such as Spotify and YouTube, require that the musical work is confirmed when TONO invoices the companies. This means that you, as a TONO member, must register the work as soon as it is made available. If you do not do so, there is a risk that the remuneration for the use will not be paid to the correct authority – or may even be lost.
/ 19/10/2018 / Willy MartinsenThe fact that new musical works should be notified to TONO continuously and as soon as possible after the work has been written is nothing new. TONO's Distribution Plan (§ 4 (1)) states:
«If notification has not been made no later than in connection with the musical work being made available to the public, or within the deadline set by the board, the right to settlement for the year in question lapses.
Despite this strict requirement in TONO's distribution plan, many members have nevertheless experienced receiving compensation for performances of their music that took place before the member registered the work in TONO. This is because TONO creates "provisional" work registrations in connection with processing music reports we receive from our customers, such as concert organizers, when we can identify the rights holder.
In other words: Have we received information from the customer that exactly du have written a song that has been performed, for example at a concert or in a streaming service, before you have registered it with us, we create an "unknown work" for you and invoice the customer based on this. When you have eventually registered the work in TONO, we have linked the unknown work with the title, and settled the fee.
A practice like this, where we create unknown works and bill customers for it, will not necessarily be able to be used in the online space in the future.
It has its background in the phenomenon of "direct licensing", where large, international music publishers or some of TONO's sister societies license their repertoires directly to, for example, streaming services rather than letting national "TONO companies" license and invoice on their behalf.
This fragmentation of the digital music market now has the consequence that management companies, both TONO and our sister societies in other countries, no longer have the opportunity to license undocumented musical works in our specific territories – despite the fact that it may involve music by TONO members that they have not yet registered with TONO.
When musical works that are not yet registered with TONO or other "TONO companies" are now played on streaming services, the companies will put funds for these plays into a pot that is distributed between management companies and music publishers based on their market share. The market share is calculated based on the companies' already documented repertoire.
It is emphasized that this only applies to the online area. In areas of "blanket licensing", broadcasting, concerts, cinema and so on, TONO still represents the world repertoire through the agreements we have with foreign management companies.
In other words: It has always been important to register your newly written works and songs with TONO quickly. Now it is more important than ever. The faster you register, the more you enable us to deliver you the correct billing at the right time for streaming and downloading.
If you have any questions about this, please contact TONO's member service by phone at 22 05 72 80 or send an email to medlem@tono.no.
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