Australian and New Zealand commercial and public radio
APRA AMCOS collects licence fees from all Australian and New Zealand commercial radio stations and Government funded public radio stations for all music broadcasts and for music used in radio advertisements, station IDs, etc.
In Australia there are approximately 260 commercial radio stations and in New Zealand there are approximately 50 stations.
Licence fees from Community and Narrowcaster radio stations are collected and distributed separately (for more information, see separate guides).
Commercial and public radio stations provide APRA AMCOS with detailed quarterly electronic reports of all the playlist music they broadcast and the number of times each song was broadcast. APRA AMCOS generally does not require those stations to provide music reports for their digital-only radio channels. Stations also provide reports on a sample basis (generally one week a month or quarter according to the size of the station) which contain details about non-playlist music used by the station, for example in station IDs, CSAs, news and weather themes, show intros etc.
Stations do not, however, report on music used in paid advertising and instead we use Music Recognition Technology (MRT) to identify and monitor songs used in advertisements broadcast in most state capitals in Australia, and in Auckland, New Zealand. For advertisements broadcast in regional areas, we rely on Jingle Reporting Forms submitted directly by our members
The songs in the electronic reports we receive from commercial radio stations and MRT services are directly matched to the vast repertoire of songs in our database. We achieve an automatic match rate of approximately 90%, which is supplemented by some additional manual research. This results for each distribution on a rolling basis more than 99% of all songs broadcast on commercial radio stations being matched to our database.
APRA’s and AMCOS’ distribution policies use a ‘points’ system to determine royalties to be allocated to each song. For radio broadcasts, these points are based on the length of the song (duration). For any song which has a broadcast duration between 1 minute and 6 minutes, a standard 12-point value is applied in both APRA and AMCOS distributions. If the broadcast was less than 1 minute, APRA and AMCOS both allocate one point per 15 seconds of duration, and for songs longer than 6 minutes APRA applies a value of 2 points per 15 seconds and AMCOS applies a value of 1 point per 15 seconds. If a station does not provide a duration for a song, the broadcast will receive 12 points. Each song’s points value is then multiplied by the number of performances of the song to calculate the total points for that song.
Once the total points have been aggregated for all songs broadcast on that station, the total revenue collected from that station is divided by the total sum of all the points, resulting in a $ rate per point. This rate is then multiplied by the number of points allocated to a song, resulting in the royalty amount payable for that song.
If the copyright owner is not a member of APRA or AMCOS but one of our overseas affiliates, we pay the money to the affiliated overseas society that represents them.
It’s important to note that we keep each commercial radio station separate when performing these calculations to ensure that the royalties being paid out are commensurate to the licence fees that we received. For example, the licence fees paid to APRA by radio station Triple M Sydney are distributed as royalties only to the copyright owners of the songs that were broadcast by Triple M Sydney.
It should also be noted that the data we receive from commercial radio stations is also used to allocate royalties from other licence schemes: for example, narrowcast radio and many public performance uses.
Music that is reported to have been used for non-playlist purposes such as news and weather themes, etc. is included in each station’s distribution pool, and receives 50% of the per point value of regular songs that are played on the radio.
Royalties for music used in advertisements are distributed using different pools from the regular music played on the radio. The size of these pools is determined by calculating the amount of music used in advertisements and CSAs as a percentage of total music broadcast hours on commercial radio. This percentage is then applied to each radio station’s total distributable amount to arrive at a value for the pool. We receive this additional information on reporting forms which are completed by radio stations, and which identify the amount of advertising on each station and the comparable use of commissioned music, general music and production music.
Where MRT is used, one point is given for each second of music duration. The total number of points is then multiplied by the number of times each advertisement or CSA is broadcast. MRT reports also contain information on the time of day the advertisement or CSA was broadcast, and we weight these points according to the time of day they were broadcast to reflect relative audience reach on a day-part basis, (e.g. the audience size of an advertisement broadcast during breakfast would be greater than, say, the audience at 3:00am).
The following sets out how points are weighted based on time of day:
Time of day weighting
For advertisements that are reported by our members through Jingle Reporting Forms, these are paid at a standard rate based on an average duration of 30 seconds for each advertisement or community service announcement. The total value is determined by the length of the campaign and the area in which the advertisement was broadcast.
To be able to broadcast music, radio stations need to be able to reproduce recordings of music onto their broadcast systems and into promotional material. To cover these reproductions, 6% of each station’s licence fees is distributed to the mechanical copyright owners of the songs being reproduced. This is split into two pools, Production Music and General Playlist. Broadcasters provide AMCOS with information about which production music songs are used, while General Playlist information is extracted from electronic reports provided to APRA.
Distributions for Australian and New Zealand commercial radio stations are calculated and paid quarterly. This includes music used in advertisements and community service announcements. The mechanical share is also distributed quarterly by AMCOS.
Royalties for music reported directly by our members using Jingle Reporting Forms are paid annually.
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.
Full census:
the licensee provides complete reports detailing all songs played, broadcast or streamed.
Music Recognition Technology (MRT):
A digital ‘fingerprint’ of each piece of music is created when it is used. This fingerprint is then compared to the digital fingerprints of many millions of musical works housed in a third-party fingerprint database. This database also contains each work’s metadata (that is, the names of writers, performers, recording details etc.) enabling the owners of each matched work to be identified and paid accordingly.
Jingle:
In terms of royalty payments, a jingle refers to any music used in advertisements, including commissioned songs and compositions, general songs and compositions and production music.
Production music:
Production music is recorded music specifically composed for music libraries to be licensed to customers for the synchronisation or dubbing in audio and audiovisual productions. This includes adverts, films, DVDs, TV & radio programs, websites, online games, music on hold and ringtones.
This fact sheet is a guide only. Refer to our full Distribution Rules and Practices for more information.