Record number of new TONO members in 2013

85 years after its establishment, TONO has never signed more new management contracts with composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers than in 2013. During the year, TONO signed management contracts with 1547 individuals and 5 music publishers. This is the highest number of new rights holders in a calendar year ever. For comparison, there were 1495 new rights holders in 2012, and 892 in 2004.

– The majority of the new copyright holders are, perhaps naturally enough, young people. Nevertheless: It is worth noting that young music creators are aware that their music is valuable, and that they deserve to be paid fairly for all the work they put into writing music. Honor, glory and applause may be good, but you can't use it to buy bread and milk or new guitar cables, Willy Martinsen points out. – At the same time, we experience this as a vote of confidence in TONO, and we naturally find that very gratifying. Over the past few years, we have also worked a lot on awareness campaigns aimed at young creators through information tours, collaboration with by:Larm and several educational institutions around the country. A final explanation is that copyright is clearly strong among younger music creators, which again testifies to dignity and self-awareness as much as economics. TONO's concert income has increased steadily in recent years, and testifies, among other things, to the high demand for concert experiences. If you combine this with digital distribution channels, you also see other explanations for the growth in the number of people who want to belong to TONO. – You had to go through the eye of a needle to get your music published a few years ago. In the age of streaming, “world distribution” is a few formalities and keystrokes away. Music has always lived in dialogue with technology, whether it concerns the development and refinement of instruments, recording techniques or in distribution to the public. We believe streaming has been an inspiration for perhaps younger people in particular. More people are publishing music, and it is well known that composers and arrangers can earn income via TONO by publishing music also in WiMP, Spotify, Beat and so on, says Martinsen. 80,2 percent of the rights holders associated with TONO, a total of more than 24,000, are men. 30 percent are in their 30s, 22 percent in their 40s and 20 percent are between 21 and 30. They mainly live in the largest cities and surrounding areas: 30 percent in Oslo, 10 percent in Akershus, 9 percent in Hordaland and 7 percent in Sør-Trøndelag, while the rest are distributed fairly evenly across the other counties. In 2013, TONO's rights holders registered 23,841 new musical works with TONO. This was a slight decrease from the previous year, when 24,043 works were registered. Fluctuations will occur, and may increase one year if many new rights holders register many works when registering. But the trend is steadily increasing: In 2004, 16,698 new works were registered. 45 percent of those surveyed in TONO's member survey stated that they registered between 1 and 10 new works with TONO in 2012. 10 percent stated that they registered more than 30 works. This group will normally be new to TONO who bring their entire catalogue of works when they join the organization.

Willy Martinsen, communications manager at TONO, email: , mobile: 909 65,254