· The start of payments for Greek creators approved by members’ GA
· The "Nikos Antypas" Aid Fund is established for AUTODIA’s members
From Monday July 10th, Greek composers, songwriters, authors, and publishers, as well as sister societies of AUTODIA, gradually began to receive their distribution reports of over €7m in total, regarding the usages of their works in both Greek territory and abroad.
In the Distribution 2023S1, the total gross amount of royalties amounted to €7,052,340 and the net amount to €5,752,465, recording a significant increase of 67%, compared to the corresponding last year's Distribution 2022S1.
The revenue sources included in this Distribution are mainly Public Performance, Concerts, Cinemas, Netflix (the streaming audiovisual platform that gradually hosts Greek productions), Online (Mint Digital Services - THE MLC), Mechanical Reproduction, Private Copy, Revenue from Abroad, etc.
The annual Ordinary General Assembly of AUTODIA’s members held on Friday July 7th, at the Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, approved all the items on the agenda and gave the green light to the Distribution 2023S1.
At the beginning, the BoD Chairman Yiannis Glezos referred to the Organization’s goals in the next period including:
1) The creation of a digital platform by AUTODIA for the identification of members' works in music and audiovisual streaming services, with the aim of a simplified process, as well as more efficient, and more effective royalty collections.
2) The intensification of efforts for more effective royalty collections for its represented repertoire in Cyprus.
3) The renegotiation for an additional increase in royalties received from the national public broadcaster ERT and other major music users of AUTODIA’s represented repertoire.
4) The preparation of a study for the introduction of parameters in the Organization's Distributions such as the historicity and timelessness of the musical repertoires.
These issues will be submitted with detailed proposals to an extraordinary General Assembly of its members next December.
The CEO Margarita Panagiotopoulou, in her turn, announced the creation of the Aid Fund under the name "Nikos Antypas", following a proposal by the Chairman Yannis Glezos, in honor of the deceased composer and former Chairman, which was approved unanimously by the GA body.
In addition, Ms. Panagiotopoulou referred to the consolidation of Greek users’ trust, the increasing influx of Greek creators with important commercial and historical repertoires, as well as the reception of large international repertoires and music catalogues, such as SACEM, Warner Chappell Music and Universal Music Publishing.
As pointed out by AUTODIA CEO, 2022 was a year of leapfrog growth for AUTODIA at all levels, which is reflected both in total revenue and in royalty distributions to members and sister societies.
In 2022, its revenues hit a new record high of €17,1m increased by 75% compared to 2021. Accordingly, the distributed and distributable royalties for year 2022 amounted to €12,9m, compared to €6,8m in 2021 (+89%).
Over a 5-year period (2018-2022), a net amount of royalties to be distributed of more than €28m was generated, while in the same period an average reduction in the deduction rate was recorded, limited to 20% in 2022. After the Distribution 2023S1, the whole picture is as follows: Of the €28m., a net amount of approximately €22,6m will have been distributed, that corresponds to 78,5% of the total and to a gross amount of distributed royalties of approximately €32m.
The Head of Legal Ioannis Maragoudakis pointed out the contribution to the increase in the Organization’s revenues in 2022 of the coordinated activity of the Legal Department of Public Performance and the Paralegal Department, in cooperation with the Commercial Department, as a result of all the legal actions.
Regarding Distribution 2023S1, Public Performance (+18.63%) and Concerts (+52.94%) have showed a large increase in royalties.
There was, also, a notable increase of 67.87% in Online royalties, always compared to Distribution 2022S1, due to AUTODIA’s cooperation, both with Mint Digital Services -thus Greek creators receive royalties from 50+ leading DSPs (YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, etc.) from Greek territory and 250 countries worldwide- as well as with THE MLC regarding online mechanical rights in the U.S.
AUTODIA will distribute royalties this time again to Greek creators and publishers from many territories around the world (+29.25%), through more than 80 representation agreements with sister societies in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa.
Finally, during the event, a particular reference and discussion was made regarding royalties from musical works created through AI; important regulations are expected at the European level on this subject. AI is a major challenge for the protection of authors' rights and AUTODIA participates in all levels of consultation in Greece and abroad regarding this issue.