APRA collects licence fees from Australian and New Zealand cinemas & film festivals. This includes major and independent cinema complexes, independent cinema houses, film festivals and IMAX theatres.
Electronic records of all the songs used in theatrically released films (cue sheets) are provided to APRA by production companies, music publishers and other societies.
APRA also receives box office reports from Numero, a data collection partner specialising in cinema releases and box office figures, for virtually all films screened in Australia and New Zealand.
Films reported by Numero are directly matched to the cue sheets we hold in our database. Data from the cue sheets tells us who should be paid.
Where there is no cue sheet available for a film, the box office performance figure for that film is carried forward until a cue sheet becomes available.
APRA’s distribution policy uses a ‘points’ system to determine royalties to be allocated to each song. Royalties are calculated separately for Australia and New Zealand for each song. The first step is to calculate the number of points, by multiplying the duration by weighted percentage by box office performance figure. Once the points are calculated for each song, the total licence fee is divided by the total number of points to determine a point rate. This point rate is then multiplied by the number of points that were calculated in the first step for each song, resulting in the royalty amount payable. Accordingly, a longer-duration song in a film with a lower box office may receive a higher payment than a shorter duration song in a film with a higher box office.
The song’s points may be further weighted depending on the way the song is used in the film. Background music is not weighted after being converted to points at the rate of 1 point per second, whereas weightings are applied for songs with featured and/or theme use as set out below.
Music use scaling
Film festivals’ licence fees are comparatively low and many films included in film festivals contain obscure music for which details are unable to be provided, therefore the amount of work required to distribute by direct allocation is inefficient and not cost effective. For this reason, film festival licence fees are added to the main cinema revenue distribution pool.
Once we have calculated the amount payable for a song, we can pay that amount to the copyright owner of the work. If the copyright owner is not a direct member of APRA or AMCOS but is a member of an affiliated overseas society, APRA will pay that society.
No royalties are distributed for music in cinema commercials and trailers.
Distributions for Australian and New Zealand cinemas and film festivals are calculated and paid quarterly.
View our information guide on Unidentified Songs and Disputes for more information.
Songs:
The Copyright Act refers to compositions, musical scores in the form of sheet music, broadsheets or other notation as musical works. Lyrics or words to a song are considered literary works. When we refer to songs, we are referring to all the elements of a musical/literary work protected by copyright.
Cue sheet:
A cue sheet is a record of all songs used in a film and/or television production. APRA AMCOS is provided with cue sheets for all locally produced programs broadcast in Australia and New Zealand and this information is used to distribute royalties for the public performance of the song.
Direct Allocation:
Royalties are distributed via comprehensive reporting to ensure that all reported works (subject to any thresholds that may apply) share in the distribution of the corresponding licence fees).
This fact sheet is a guide only. Refer to our full Distribution Rules and Practices for more information.