2024 confirms the growth trend for performance rights in Italy: this is demonstrated by the overall data of SCF, the leading collecting society in the sector that in the last year distributed over 51 million euros to its members and other collective societies. In particular, the share distributed to producers exceeded 42 million euros and recorded a significant increase of 7.7%, compared to 2023.
This result was supported by a double-digit growth in performance rights (+19.3%), driven both by the Broadcasting and Web sector (+12.6%) and by the Public Performance sector (+27.4%), which more than offset the contraction recorded in the Private Copy distribution (-15.4%), resulting from the decline in Italian sales of digital devices.
Consequently, the user base has exceeded over 200,000 subjects, marking +210% compared to 2008 thanks to constant awareness-raising and acquisition work, also through targeted legal activities and anti-piracy actions. The strengthening of the base represented by SCF also continues: in 2024, there was a significant growth in members, especially among independent record producers both local and international represented by intermediary companies, increasingly positioning SCF as the main reference collecting society for independent producers.
Technological innovation and transparency
SCF has continued to invest in digitalization and improved transparency, with the release of the new Katalegale dashboard for analytical monitoring of royalties, the enhancement of the automatic matching algorithm and the reduction of attribution conflicts by more than 95%.
In 2024, SCF also worked on enriching its catalogue, which has 26.5 million tracks. In this context, the RDX (Repertoire Data Exchange) platform, the centralised data exchange service for the recording industry, has seen increasing adoption by producers, improving the quality of repertoire management and distribution of music rights.
At the same time, 1,286 analytical reports were drawn up (of which 920 for radio stations alone, demonstrating increasingly accurate rights management oriented towards the real value of musical uses), with a focus on tracks with the greatest economic impact and the introduction of a new area for the collection and distribution of performance rights for the use of music in films, TV series, documentaries and other audiovisual works.
Internationalization and protection of rights
2024 was also a fruitful year for the dialogue with foreign countries: SCF further extended its network of international agreements, signing new agreements with PPCA (Australia), PPL India, ZAPRAF (Croatia) and UNIMPRO (Peru). The control over private copying abroad was also strengthened thanks to new management agreements, with the aim of maximizing the economic protection of Italian producers even outside national borders.
In line with its commitment to maximizing distributions to rights holders, SCF also announced a further reduction in the administration fee on performance rights for 2025, which went from 17% to 15% for the broadcast and web segment – a level that had not been seen for over a decade.
SCF's comment
"The 2024 budget represents an important point of balance between growth, efficiency and innovation. We have managed to increase the distributions, strengthen the international network, further reduce the administration fees and offer our clients increasingly advanced tools for the analysis of royalties: the confirmation of Italy as the seventh country in the world for performance rights - as reported by IFPI in the recent Global Music Report - is the strongest signal of the system work that we are carrying out consistently. We will continue on this path, with the aim of enhancing the Italian repertoire in all its forms" comments Mariano Fiorito, General Director.