Company of the authors, type-setters and editors of music

The Company of the authors, type-setters and editors of music ( SACEM ) is a Management company of the royalties. A private company charged by the State French with a public service mission. Created in 1850, it aims at the collective management of the collection and the distribution of the royalty of musical works which are perceived during a diffusion in public or of their reproduction on various supports.

It is member of the International Confédération of the Companies of Authors and Type-setters (CISAC) founded in 1926.

Origins

The SACEM was born following an incident to the café concert the Ambassadors in March 1847. Ernest Le Bourget, Paul Henrion and Victor Parizot, type-setters and authors known, refused to pay their consumption, estimating that they did not owe anything since the owner of the establishment used their works without remunerating them in return. The three musicians gained a lawsuit, which caused, in 1850, the birth of a trade union of the authors gathering 221 members. The following year, it takes its final name of SACEM.

The company develops then on the whole of the French territory (181 agencies in 1858). With the appearance of the Gramophone, then from the Broadcasting and Cinema, the SACEM extends its activity (royalties) to new media. It will be later the Long-playing record, the Télévision, the FM, the CD, Internet…

Current operation

In France the society of perception and of distribution of the royalties as the SACEM have a statute of private law which enables them not to be submitted to the public agencies of control like the Court of Auditors. They exert nevertheless a recognized mission of public utility under the supervision of the Ministère of the Culture. Following a certain number of problems concerning the companies of close rights, the State established a standing committee of control of the society of perception and distribution in 2001. This contôle can seem paradoxical, if one thinks that the SACEM and the other companies of authors are organizations which manage private interests.

The SACEM is the only collective management company of royalty musical in France. It is not however about a legal Monopole (contrary to some of its counterparts foreign). At the beginning of the Years 2000, the SACEM managed the rights of more than 100.000 authors, type-setters and editors. It perceives each year approximately 600 million euros of royalties. The company is able to redistribute approximately 80% of the collected sums. The personnel costs of its 1.400 employees account for 65% of the total of its loads. In 2001 Bernard Miyet succeeded Jean-Wolf Tournier which was with the head of the SACEM since 1961.

Adhesion with the SACEM

The SACEM manages the royalties exclusively of the beneficiary (editors, authors, type-setters, arrangers and translators). It does not have as a role the management of the close right (right of the interpreters). Any person having composed or writes five works of which at least one is diffused five times over one period six months or reproduced on a marketed support, can be member.

The members deposit all their original works even those which were diffused publicly. The author authorizes the SACEM then to manage his exclusive rights of execution and reproduction of his works. He preserves the intellectual property on the adaptations, the rearrangements, on his moral rights and patrimonial.

It should be specified that the authors and type-setters do not have any obligation to adhere to the SACEM. They indeed have any latitude to manage and defend their rights by themselves (although that is almost impossible on a professional scale), as they have any latitude to delegate this management to another company of author (for example a foreign company of authors). Their share of collection of duty is then versed for them by the means of the agreements of collective reciprocity between management companies of royalty: work is carried out in France, the corresponding rights are thus versed with the SACEM, which then transfers them to the company to which the author is affiliated, and this last pay the author in question.

Lastly, it is useless to be member of this company to press CD or to play a concert presenting of the original compositions; those which wish however to protect their works can address to the National union Authors and Type-setters (SNAC), or choose to distribute them under a license known as “free” (for example the license '' Creative Commons '').

Prerogatives

The role of the SACEM is defined as follows:

Role of distribution (1): the SACEM individually distributes between its members the amount of money perceived as payment of duty of execution, diffusion, and reproduction of works of which it with management. This distribution is carried out in proportion to the uses of works in question in France and abroad (by the means of the reciprocities), after taking away of the operating costs of the SACEM. This cost is a fixed ratio per period of time.
Role of distribution (2): the SACEM distributes near the companies with which it has agreements of reciprocity the amount of money perceived as payment of duty of execution, diffusion and reproduction of works whose these companies have management.
Role of perception: the SACEM charges near its customers the rights of execution, diffusion, and reproduction. Is customer any person or using organization of works (diffusion, reproduction, organization of live performance) of which the management of the rights is delegated to the SACEM or any company with which the SACEM has agreements of reciprocity on the matter.
Role of control: the SACEM controls part of the made uses of works of which it with the load.

The organizers of demonstrations diffusing of the music are held to transmit to the SACEM or to having the rights (author, type-setter, editor) in accordance with the article L. 132-21 of the code of the intellectual property the list of the titles which will be played. The company asks for a contractual compensation for the demonstration free and can grant reductions to associations of public interest. In the same way an agreement between the SACEM and State education makes it possible to the teachers to diffuse works during their courses.

Criticisms and Outlines

The SACEM is sometimes associated on several subjects of topicality. The dysfunctions of this company were in particular described in a work published in 2003: Control on the music (ISBN 2702133673) written by Irene Inchauspé and Rémy Godeau.

It does not remain about it less than collective management, as such, remains a relevant concept per hour of the numerical whole. It makes it possible to offer the broadest access to works, without those which being with the source of this economic flow are not isolated. To articulate or not with system of legal license (because one lapse of memory too often that a system of legal license cannot function correctly without the existence of a powerful collective management), it represents a mode of exercise of the capable rights patrimonial to preserve the delicate social compromise between authors, owners and consumers towards which tightens any system of literary property and artistic; with this particular force, in accordance with the tradition of the countries of continental Europe, to place the author in the center of the device.

The spoliation of the Jewish authors during the Second world war

A parliamentary commission was charged by the French government with inquiring into possible spoliations during the Second world war. It appears that the decision not to transfer the rights of the Jewish authors more seems to have been a decision taken in an autonomous way by the leaders of the SACEM. Moreover, for some, of strong suspicions weigh on a possible diversion of these nonversed sums.

See in counterpoint the answer of Laurent Petitgirard (author/type-setter member of the SACEM): “ the business of the Jewish goods with the SACEM was examined and judged by three commissions which showed all that no author was despoiled. Were there malfaisants with the SACEM during the time of the occupation, obviously, the same proportion as in all the French administrations. There was also the same proportion of courageous people and lost people. But it left the least policy there spoliation of the Jewish authors, not, that was clearly shown by commissions more than pointed, equipped with all the necessary means of investigation ”. extract of the cat carried out on the Ratiatum site

Music over the Internet

The statutes of the SACEM prohibit the members from diffusing free their works on Internet except on their official own site in a preoccupation with a promotion. Moreover, it authorized the online music stores to transfer the same percentage that on the record sales, that is to say 8% their receipts. Certain authors think however that the logistic costs are definitely less on Internet and that the percentage of the royalties should thus be at least 50%. They indeed show the SACEM to seek to become an inevitable actor of the diffusion on line, at the expense of the interests of the artists who it is supposed to defend.

However, the dissatisfied authors profit, according to the statutes of their company, from the possibility of finding the property of their rights and of ensuring themselves of them management. In addition to certain material difficulties related to individual management, the author will have in this case to only negotiate with the owners. It is then not very probable that it manages to impose a rate of royalty higher than that obtained by the SACEM.

The SACEM claims (and deposited felt sorry for) 12% of the selling price to the site of sale of online music e-compil of Universal Music France.

The SACEM supported the provisions favorable to the maintenance of the free exercise of the exclusive right at the time of the vote of the bill DADVSI. The vote of this text - which had vocation to introduce in French right an European directive - was the place of a passionate debate on opportunity of founding an obligatory management system collective of the right of representation for the diffusions of works via software P2P (Global license). However, similar system would have definitively imposed to the authors the obligation to resort to the services of a collective management company to obtain their remuneration. In accordance with its mission of defense of the interests of the creators, the SACEM preferred to support the traditional of literary property and artistic model. Model which, by instituting the owner author of his creation, leaves him the free choice of the management style that it considers suitable.

March 14th, 2007, the SACEM, after having made pressure on the company OVH which lodged the site radioblog, obtains the closing of the site. The SACEM would claim in Radioblog 8% of their sales turnover " mondial" (sic.) while the searchs for French type-setters authors accounted for 16% of the research carried out on this site. The argument appears without carried as of the moment that on the French territory the SACEM represents to it quasi entirety of the world repertory because of the agreements of reciprocity concluded with its counterparts foreign.

Spectacle of end of the year at the school

At the end of the spectacle of end of the year at the school of Peillac, in 2006, the pupils sang (with the microphone) with their mistress the song “Good-bye Mister the professor” (written in particular by Hugues Aufray) during more than thirty seconds without to have warned beforehand the SACEM. Informed by the press, this organization sent a command to pay for the sum of 75 euros. The SACEM explains that this sum does not relate to only the accused song but all the contents of the spectacle, which being diffused in a place considered to be public and whose advertisement having been made before is thus subjected to remuneration at the SACEM. V. explanations brought by the SACEM

After having pointed out the need for paying the right remuneration of the creators, by respect of the rights of others (the school would undoubtedly not plan not to pay the material which it rents to organize its spectacle!), the author, Hugues Aufray, paid itself this sum.

Collection of the duties

The sums discharged with the SACEM under the royalties, cannot in no case to be comparable with unspecified " taxes".

This important question of qualification is not due to the fact that the SACEM is not an public agency, but with the fact that the company of authors ensures the collective management of the patrimonial rights of its members (authors, type-setters and editors of music).

The SACEM is not a trade union, it is an civil society made up and managed by the holders of royalty (authors and their having rights). It is a non-profit-making company. In other words, it does not carry out a profit for its account in order to share the benefit between its members of it. It n the other hand centralizes perceptions of the sums due of the use of works of its members, then distributed with the latter after having taken an amount corresponding to its operation costs. The sums perceived by the SACEM are thus royalties of royalties. They constitute, and the word is not too strong, a kind of wages for the authors.

Any representation or reproduction without authorization of a work of the repertory managed by the SACEM which does not fall into the field from one from the exceptions to the royalties, constitutes an act of counterfeit. The counterfeit being a civil and penal offense, the counterfeiter incurs penal sanctions (fines, even custodial sentence), like civil sanctions (damages, seizure and destruction of the counterfeiting material, etc).

Reference mark

members: 110.000
collection of the duties: 757,4 million euros
distribution of the rights: 608,4 million euros
672.148 works different distributed under their diffusion public
522.838 works different under their reproduction on a support (disc, cassette, dvd, multi-media)
many works deposited: 522.838
collaborator permanent: 1.490

Chiffres for 2005. Source: SACEM.

See too

Royalty
CISAC (federator organization)
SABAM (Belgian equivalent)
SUISA (Swiss equivalent)
SOCAN (Canadian equivalent)
SODRAC (Canadian equivalent/Quebequois)

Refer

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