SACEM and Multimedia

SACEM has always been interested in technological advances and developments in ways of using works, and has endeavored to offer new tools for optimal administration and protection of authors’ rights. With the advent of the Internet, rates in line with the new economic models have been implemented.

With the introduction of digital tools and the technological revolution, there have been considerable changes in the way both authors’ rights and the works themselves are viewed by the general public.
Yet whether a work is reproduced on a digital recording format or an Internet site, as background music or for a Webcast, the same principles apply to the administrative management of the use of the works.

Collective administration means that authors belonging to a society of authors assign to the society the right to issue licenses to users (producers and broadcasters) authorizing the use of their works, to collect their rights and to allocate and distribute them. This also applies to multimedia and the Internet.
The authors’ assignment of these duties to the society of authors is exclusive. The society is then the only party entitled to conclude licensing contracts authorizing use by producers, broadcasters and other users (bearing in mind, however, the specific case of commissioned works). The society is the only party able to pay the author.

The works are the property of the authors. You cannot use them, either on a digital recording format or on your Website, even when offered free of charge, and no matter how long or short the excerpt is, without having received prior authorization from the collecting society (SACEM or SESAM, as applicable).