Although our main role is to provide licensing solutions that ensure compliance and generate income for copyright owners, we also have an important part to play in the process of distributing the licence fees to creators and publishers.
In order to determine how to allocate the money for distribution our Survey Operations team carry out surveys and audits of our licensed customers to collect data about what publications are used and what is being copied.
We match this survey data to details of the works and titles using our comprehensive database of publications so that we can identify the copyright holders and calculate how fees should be allocated.
These data and fees are then paid to the three Societies on whose behalf we work so that they can pass on royalties to individual writers, artists, visual creators and publishers whose works have been copied. A breakdown of the distribution of fees for the year 2010-2011 is shown below;
ALCS - £20.2m
PLS - £35.4m
DACS - £4.8m
International - £5.6m
TOTAL = £66m
By this system of collective licensing the CLA and every organisation that pays a licence fee have helped to support creators by maintaining the value of their work and providing a fair reward for the use of their intellectual property. This reward provides the means for them to sustain their creativity as part of the UK’s creative industries.
