Distribution in South Africa has a lot to do with political connection. PAIN is breaking through this by putting everyone together as a collective and taking action as a group.

The low hanging fruit in the industry is the neighbouring rights which include performance rights for broadcast and public performance of recorded music. Both audio tracks and and music videos, earn revenue for record labels and their artists. This revenue split in South Africa is 50% to the label and the other 50% is paid to the artists that performed the music on the recording.

The revenue streams from these neighbouring rights have been growing throughout the world and is thus an important source of income to record labels and their artists as the income from the sale of physical product is rapidly drying up.

South Africa holds a small portion of the international market, with rights to the sound recording being worth approximately R350M per annum ($18.346) whereas the global turnover of this industry is about $10B or about R180billion.

Section 9 sound recording communication to the public rights are also known as “needle-time” rights. These rights are licensed to radio and TV broadcasters, retailers, banks, shopping malls, sport stadiums, restaurants and venues of various descriptions when they communicate a sound recording to the public. South African Music Performance Association (SAMPRA) received a Section 3(1)a accreditation in 2008, to collect on needeltime, although the law came into practice in SA in 2002. Independent Music Performance Rights Association (IMPRA), an organ of the Association of Independent Record Companies (AIRCO) was set up to compete for these royalties.

Music Video collections are a neighbouring right. These collections are represented by RiSA Audio Visual (RAV) formed in 2000 with public performance rights in cinematographic films (music videos). Association of Independent Record Companies (AIRCO) was established through funding from Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and Worldwide International Network (WIN) as a section 21 company, belonging to its members. Both agencies collect on music video licences and on the specific IRSC code.

Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA) trade association is an association of sound recording owners and licensees. It runs the annual SAMA Awards, issuing ISRC Codes as well overseeing an Anti-Piracy Unit. RISA represents IFPI in South Africa and are market share driven.
National Organisation of Reproduction Rights in Music (NORM) - formed in 1970 as a publishers association, primarily representing the interests of the multi-national and foreign publishers. They had a Section 6. Licence in Mechanical rights in literary and musical works. NORM are market share driven.

South African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) owns the monopoly right in South Africa to issue the global identifiers IPN#s for composers, authors, arrangers and publishers; and International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC) for musical works. SAMRO has Section 6 performance and mechanical rights in musical and literary works to issue licences to users of public performance, broadcast and transmission through diffusion services rights. SAMRO issues licences to users of public performance, broadcast and transmission through diffusion services rights.
SAMRO is a key African continent member of International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) since 1963.CISAC is dominated by America’s BMI and ASCAP, whilst PRS in the UK, SACEM in France and GEMA in Germany are enormous.CISAC member organisations collect on average 8 billion Euro’s annually of which less than 1% is collected by African organisations, and 0.4% by SAMRO. DALRO was formed by SAMRO in 1967 for licencing Reprographic reproduction rights, public performance and reproduction rights for literary works.
SAMRO contributes 0.4% to the global collection and is unregulated.

Copyright law deals with two kinds of works: authorial works where the author, the creator is the first owner and artistic works, photographs and sculptures; and it deals with entrepreneurial works, where the person who did the arrangements is the owner; the person who paid is the owner.
1. Safe harbour provisions provide an appropriate balance between DSP copyright holders and users. 2. Online contracts if un-regulated fall into the “One World” licence, which “transcends geographic and national boundaries.” 3. Copyleft and Creative Commons undermine copyright law. 4. “Data", "databases", "hosting", "linking" "safe harbour" are essential aspects of the monetising of copyrights today. All online copyright works are used, traded, distributed and paid for with and by data. No copyright law regime yet has considered a “data” right when work is used for purposes of accessing data on a listener/viewer? 5. No copyright law regime yet has considered an “advertising” right when works are used for the purposes of advertising to a listener/viewer?

Africa is a fertile ground for new business ...