Questions about licensing background music

FONDATION SUISA fosters music creation of all genres in Switzerland, especially by:

• supporting projects in connection with contemporary musical creation in Switzerland,
• supporting publishers who promote contemporary musical creation in Switzerland,
• publishing and distributing recorded music anthologies of all genres with a view to making available the broadest possible range of Swiss music, 
• national and international advertising campaigns for Swiss music.
• participating in fairs and events abroad,
• concluding partnerships with similar organisations,
• awarding prizes and grants.

FONDATION SUISA for Music grants financial support to individual applications in the following categories:

• concerts and tours in Switzerland and abroad,
• composition commissions,
• publishing publications (music books or scores),
• orchestra materials
• film music,
• other musical projects of significance for Switzerland.

FONDATION SUISA is funded through an annual allocation of 2.5% of SUISA's domestic performance and broadcasting revenues. This corresponds to about CHF 2 million per year.

Send your application for funding to:

FONDATION SUISA
11bis, Avenue du Grammont
1007 Lausanne
Phone +41 (0)21 614 32 70
Fax +41 (0)21 614 32 79
email

The application form can be obtained from FONDATION SUISA or it can be downloaded from the website.
 

Mint Digital Services is a joint venture established by SUISA and SESAC, a US music rights organisation. Mint Digital Services offers administration services for multi-territorial online music licensing. Essentially, its services involve processing usage reports for online platforms, identifying represented repertoires, and invoicing.

On the one hand, Mint Digital Services enables SESAC and SUISA to streamline the online licensing of their own repertoires. On the other, the joint venture offers its services to large music publishers and, in the future, to other rights management organisations.

There were three main reasons:

1. Through Mint Digital Services, SUISA can turn to account its high-performance IT infrastructure for the development of new business areas.
2. The joint venture enables SUISA to better exploit the capacity of its existing IT infrastructure. So far, SUISA's extensive investment in its online licensing and distribution activities has only served its own repertoire. With little additional cost, Mint Digital Services can handle the invoicing and administration of SESAC's repertoire and those of other publishers - at a later date perhaps even for other rights management organisations. 
3. SUISA is thus equipping itself for the future. In coming years, rights' management organisations will see their monopolies challenged. The rule that only one society should be responsible for licensing the world repertoire in its own country is being gradually eroded. The trend towards direct licensing - in other words, multi-territorial licensing of own repertoire - is progressing even outside the online sector.
    

No. Nothing will change for SUISA members. SUISA remains the contact for members and will continue to issue their settlement statements. Mint Digital Services simply provides services to SUISA.

The partnership with SESAC has no affect on settlement flows from the USA. The joint venture only concerns online uses outside the USA. SUISA will continue to use its best efforts to improve payments from the USA and other countries. However, we have only limited influence on the practice of our foreign sister societies.

No. The joint venture will only provide administration and invoicing services. To ensure access to the European Economic Area for the licensing of the SESAC and SUISA repertoires, subsidiaries have been established in Liechtenstein:  Mint SESAC Licensing, a subsidiary of SESAC, and Mint SUISA Licensing, a subsidiary of SUISA. The two companies will be responsible for the separate online licensing of their own rights, and for the performing rights of most Anglo-American companies.

We may be able to negotiate better contracts with certain online platforms. But the platforms themselves will decide whether they want to negotiate with the two SUISA and SESAC licensing entities individually or jointly. If they decide in favour of joint negotiations, SUISA is likely to profit from the larger SESAC repertoire to obtain better terms and conditions.

SUISA, i.e. SUISA Digital Licensing AG, regularly renegotiates its contracts with online platforms with a view to securing the best possible terms and conditions for authors and publishers.

SUISA's tariffs contain the royalty rates for the use of authors’ rights. SUISA's distribution rules stipulate how royalties shall be distributed to the beneficiaries. In principle, SUISA distinguishes between distribution on a per-work basis (royalties are distributed for each work based on programme lists) and distribution on a lump-sum basis (based on statistics, broadcasting programmes and basic repertoires).

SUISA respects the settlements time schedule.

After the administration cost-coverage contribution, SUISA makes the following deductions:

• 7.5% of revenues from performance and broadcasting in Switzerland are paid to SUISA's Pension Fund for authors and publishers;
• 2.5% of revenues from performance and broadcasting in Switzerland are paid to the SUISA Foundation for Music which promotes musical creation in Switzerland.

These deductions are not applied to revenues from audio and video on demand uses. 

Revenues from abroad are distributed to SUISA members and principals after a deduction of 4% for the additional administrative costs. Legal provisions concerning withholding tax may apply.