Most artists are very careful to prevent their music from being downloaded for free – so how come they still aren’t paid when it is played? Artists, record labels and publishers usually ask collecting societies to arrange for their music to be licensed, and to collect royalties on it, but most have never actually been

When an artist writes a song, they automatically become a right holder and have a number of rights in relation to it. Since it’s expensive and impractical for artists, labels and publishers to manage these rights themselves, most ask a collecting society to administer them. For more about collecting societies, see our previous blog post. This