French Music Rights Body SACEM Collected Record $1.62B In Royalties in 2023
France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM) has announced a 5% hike year-on-year on the total amount of royalties it collected on behalf of its members in 2023, to bring in unprecedented revenue of $1.62B (€1.487B) for the year.
The Paris-based body, which was created in 1851, represents 224,470 members – divided between creators and publishers – and manages a global repertoire of more than 160 million works, according to its own figures.
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The collection agency attributed the revenue rise in part to the bounce back of the live music sector after the Covid-19 pandemic, with general royalties rising 18.0% year-on-year to hit $422M (€388M).
Another key factor was a 13.0% rise in digital revenue to $627M (€577M). SACEM noted that it remained “particularly vigilant” about the digital sector and that it had renegotiated key agreements in 2023 with Apple Music, Spotify and Deezer.
Further 2023 developments in the digital space included the renewal of several SVOD contracts and two new multi-territory online mandates taking effect with the Hungarian society ARTISJUS and the Brazilian society UBC.
Amid the good news, however, royalties from TV, radio and telecoms fell 4% year-on-year to $346M (€318M).
SACEM also warned that the passage from physical media sales to digital continued to weigh on the sector, with the development of viable business models that benefited all music artists still proving elusive, while AI was also rising as a fresh challenge.
On the latter point, SACEM noted it had became the first collective management body to initiate an opt-out clause for it members’ work in 2023.
In other key developments for 2023, the body said an efficiency and cost-cutting strategy first launched in October 2021 was continuing to bear fruit.
The net operating costs-to-collections ratio fell for the second year running to 10.76% in 2023 compared with 11.65% in 2022.
SACEM said that this in turn had contributed to a 17% rise in the amount paid out to rights-holders, which totalled than $1.34B (€1.233B).
It added that a proposal will be put to the vote of the General Meeting on 18 June to pay an additional $40.2M (€37m) in royalties in 2024, out of the surplus on the 2023 management account.
In other improvements, the collection and distribution times for general royalties (from concerts or background music) and the exploitation of streaming works on Apple Music and Spotify, had been reduced to three months after the quarter of exploitation.
The body said this would also soon be the case for YouTube, for music content, from July 2024
In other figures, the body said that 50,000 members received royalty distributions from abroad, against 47,000 in 2022 and non-French artists now represented 12% of its members.
It added that this international footprint was set to grow in 2024 thanks to the signing of new mandates, such as that with Paris-based Believe group for its publishing business (Sentric, Tunecore), which covers more than 150 territories.
In other activities, SACEM said it had supported 3,657 projects for the dissemination and promotion of music and also continued its work helping individual artists through its cultural action program, which is financed via monies raised through France’s private copying levies.
Artists supported by the program in the past include Zaho de Sagazan who performed at the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival this year.
Against this backdrop, SACEM said its Board of Directors had voted unanimously to extend Cécile Rap-Veber’s term as CEO.
“2023 was a year of confirmation in the implementation of our major strategic priorities. We continued our transformation into Sacem 3.0 and worked to improve efficiency, ensuring the sustainability of our management account and optimizing both our collections and the amount distributed to our members,” said Rap-Veber.
“Looking beyond the figures, we have worked to provide social and professional support for our members and have continued to defend our collective management model in the face of competition and technological upheaval.”
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