APRA AMCOS collects licence fees from streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Vevo and SoundCloud for music offered on their streaming services. Streaming is now the most popular way to consume music throughout the world.
APRA AMCOS also collects licence fees for music being used on user generated content, social media and fitness services such as YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook (and associated properties including Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Oculus) and Les Mills.
These licences cover performing and mechanical rights, and royalties are paid to both APRA and AMCOS members using the methods described below.
Streaming Services
Streaming service providers send us detailed electronic files of all the songs that have been streamed on a periodic basis i.e. some reports are provided monthly, some quarterly.
We receive records of over 40 billion plays per quarter, with play count continuing to grow. Due to the extremely high volume of data from streaming services, it isn’t feasible to include all reported data from every service tier (e.g. Premium Subscriber, Family, Student, etc.). To achieve a fair and equitable distribution, songs with more than 50 streams in each service tier are included in our distributions by direct allocation.
For smaller streaming services with licence fees less than $5,000, we distribute by analogy using Spotify and Apple Music data as it is not cost effective for us to process this information. In these cases, a 1,000 stream threshold is applied.
YouTube
YouTube provides a number of reports relating to their ad-funded and subscription services and distinguishes between videos identified as music or 'general entertainment with music' within this reporting. APRA processes these reports in full, and similar to streaming services a 50-play threshold is applied due to the high volumes of data in each report.
Facebook provide us with quarterly reports listing individual songs and compositions that were selected from their audio library by users on Facebook and Instagram, so we can perform a distribution by direct allocation using these reports. Facebook also provides a User Generated Content report where the content being shared can be matched to songs in their library using audio recognition. Given the high volume of records reported, a minimum threshold of 50 plays per song is applied.
TikTok
TikTok provides reports to APRA AMCOS of musical works used on their service, and these reports are used to make direct distributions. Unlike other streaming and/or UGC services, these reports do not provide details of the number of streams of each track/video but instead provide the number of 'video creations' per work (i.e. the number of videos created by users of the service that use a particular recording). Consequently, this 'video creations' value is used as the 'multiplier' to determine relative payments to each track. Reports are provided quarterly and relate to video creations in Australia and New Zealand during the quarter.
Live Streamed Performances
APRA’s licence agreements with Facebook and YouTube cover live music performances streamed on those platforms. As the services themselves are unable to submit the details of songs included in live streams APRA relies on claims submitted by members, for streams originating in Australia or New Zealand.
Once received, the electronic streaming reports are directly matched to the vast repertoire of songs in our database.
Reporting of performances on streaming services is exclusive of durations, and therefore each song included in a streaming services distribution is allocated a value based on the number of streams it receives, rather than a value based on the duration of the song.
Once we have calculated the amount payable for a song, we can pay that amount to the copyright owners of the work. If the copyright owner is not a member of APRA or AMCOS, we pay the money to the affiliated overseas society that represents them.
Distributions for all streaming services 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.
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).
Full census:
the licensee provides complete reports detailing all songs played, broadcast or streamed.
Sample:
Royalties are distributed via a representative sample of performances (which may be in relation to a particular licence scheme, licence scheme or group thereof), where it is inappropriate, unfeasible, or not economically viable to provide a Direct Allocation.
Analogy:
Royalties are distributed via distribution pools (or by copying datasets) that are most similar in terms of a licensee’s music content. This method is used when Direct Allocation or Sample reporting is impractical.
This fact sheet is a guide only. Refer to our full Distribution Rules and Practices for more information.