Here is this year's summer greeting from TONO's managing director Cato Strøm.
/ 02/07/2021 / Willy MartinsenAs Norway now enters the most typical summer month, we at TONO are pleased to see that covid-19 is letting go in some areas, and that some of our members can finally start holding concerts again. There are still infection control restrictions, but things are getting better. Nothing pleases us more than seeing that we are receiving more concert reports. Nevertheless, we already see now, and as previously expressed, that 2021 will be an equally financially demanding year for both TONO's members and the TONO business.
In the future, we will see that more and more of these concert reports will come digitally. We are slowly starting a soft launch of a digital service for concert organizers. We launched a digital reporting service for churches earlier this spring, and are currently only in the pilot phase when it comes to concert organizers. But the solution is underway, and throughout the fall, more and more concert organizers will be invited into a new digital interface that makes it easier and faster to apply for a TONO permit, and easier to report to TONO, than before. This is a clear expression of TONO's current strategy of digital transformation.
On July 1, the law on collective management of copyright will come into force. The law has been awaited since the EU adopted the so-called Collective Rights Management (CRM) Directive in 2014. The Directive sets a common standard for all European collective management societies, and ensures ownership, influence and transparency for rights holders. TONO is a cooperative and is operated in accordance with modern company law. The organization is owned and managed by the rights holders, and is already well adapted to the requirements of the law. We will make sure that TONO is operated in accordance with the law into the future.
Over the past couple of years, we have provided our input to the Ministry of Culture and the Storting as they have worked to write the law. We are pleased to see that the vast majority of our input has been taken into account.
The Ministry of Culture is also working on the implementation of the Digital Single Market Directive. This will ensure stronger harmonisation of copyright legislation across Europe. Some will remember that artists across Europe mobilized, and cheered, when it was adopted in the EU in April 2019.
Article 17 of the Directive states that sharing services such as Facebook etc. make a transfer to the public when they access user-uploaded content, such as music. They are therefore obliged to enter into licensing agreements with companies such as TONO and similar. We have already seen the results of this. TONO has had agreements with Facebook since 2020 and several others have also joined the fold.
As the Ministry of Culture now works on implementing the directive into Norwegian legislation, we have good faith that they will look to the recently adopted implementation in Denmark. There, legislation has now been established that has established clear rules of the game in the market, and that ensures a better balance between rights holders and sharing services. In September last year, the Danish Minister of Culture was early in sending signals to sharing services that the position of rights holders, not only for music, had to be strengthened as a result of the Danish implementation of the DSM Directive.
TONO received NOK 30,5 million in state aid from the Ministry of Culture earlier this year. The money will compensate for TONO members' losses as a result of imposed infection control regulations. According to the ministry, the funds will be paid to our Norwegian members according to established principles. Considerable work has been done so far and various models have been considered with the aim of finding the fairest model possible. We are now working towards paying out the largest part of the money in the September settlement.
TONO was among the first to move into Galleri Oslo on Grønland in 1989. The location is one of the most attractive in Oslo in terms of commercial properties, and the largest owners have long been working on plans for demolition and reconstruction. This will take a few years and TONO has therefore sold its shares and will move on November 1st into modern premises at Møllergata 4, right next to Christiania Glassmagasin.
I wish both members and customers of TONO a really good summer.