Europe has been at the centre of our operations for the last two years in the unprecedented battle to secure the future of our treasured authors’ rights. It ended with victory in March, with the vote on the Copyright Directive by Parliament.
This directive will be seen as one of the major pieces of legislation marking the preceding five-year period of the European Union. A few weeks after the victory, on 26 May, more than three hundred million citizens went to the polls to choose their representatives. In France, culture was absent from the debates. However, I am convinced that culture must, more than ever before, regain its place at the heart of European policies. Europe remains the world model for cultural policy. It invented authors’ rights and collective management. It accounts for more than 56% of all authors’ rights payments collected worldwide. As the CISAC (Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs [International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers]) annual report stated in 2019, Sacem is still the world's leading collective management organisation. On 13 May, in the presence of the Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, received representatives of all the cultural industries at the Elysée Palace, as part of the France Créative initiative, launched by Sacem. At this meeting, he said that he wanted to commit himself wholeheartedly to the creators' cause.
Sacem’s General Assembly this June was, as every year, the time for us to meet. I'd like to welcome our new Board of Directors and, in particular, its President, Bruno Lion. A big thank you to Jean-Marie Moreau for all his work, his commitment and his keen understanding of the common good throughout the year of his presidency. We followed a policy of strict cost control and our net expenses decreased from 15.6% in 2017 to 15.1% in 2018. Sacem allocated 85% of the money it collected. Thanks to prioritising a more accurate and timely allocation of payments, we have been able to put in place a series of improvements which have increased Sacem’s operating cash flow (net of funding reserves from Sacem mutual assistance allowance scheme, RAES, and cultural action) from 8.5 months of collections in 2012 to 6.7 months of collections in 2018, a decrease of 21%. Our workforce has been reduced (eighty-eight fewer positions since 2012) despite the strong growth of the business. The level of collections per employee has increased by 4% each year, i.e., + 27% in six years, which reflects the large increase in the productivity of our teams. I would like to pay tribute to their tireless work in the service of authors, composers, and music publishers. Excluding IT investments, we achieved a net decrease in all our other expenses in 2018. Investment in technology and innovation is at the very core of our strategy in the era of streaming and given the trillions of pieces of data which we have to process each year.
This imperative, and our strong sense of community, are the foundations of our vision for authors’ rights in Europe. This is the very vision we are defending tirelessly: yesterday with the European directive and, in the future, during its transposition. I therefore suggest that you read the MagSacem section on the real impact of the European directive on creators and publishers. Within its pages you will also find an analysis of our cultural activities backed-up by evidence collected in the field, a behind-the-scenes report from the Paris Metro and a portrait of one of our members, the Italian-Swiss composer Oscar Bianchi. An eclectic edition which you can read whilst going around the festivals!
Jean-Noël Tronc
Chief Executive Officer
Published September 26 2019