A few days ago, it was held the Annual General Meeting of SCF, the main collecting society of neighbouring rights in Italy and eighth globally.
As it was highlighted during the meeting, the collection of proceeds took place in a context of extraordinary difficulty due to the health emergency, unfortunately far from overcome, and confirmed by the drop in GDP of 8.9% (ISTAT data), which will only partially be recovered in 2021, for which the national statistical institute expects limited growth.
The area of greatest suffering was, as expected, that of public performance which, due to the repeated lockdowns and red zones that hit public premises, showed a decline in revenues of 29%. Revenues from radio and television were down, albeit to a lesser extent, by 4% while, thanks to greater recovery action on foreign countries, revenues from the international market grew by 46%.
Overall, in 2020 SCF has therefore distributed to those entitled, including the MLCs of performers, a total of 38.5 million euros, down by 32.3% compared to 2019. The difficulties in collecting the fees were obviously transversal to all the collecting societies and also the data shared internationally confirm a reduction in collections on all the main markets, everywhere more marked in the public performance sector.
SCF General Manager Mariano Fiorito commented on the result:
“SCF's activities towards customers and the market have been focused on managing the impact caused by the health emergency and the closure provisions to protect public health in the various categories of users.
In fact, from the first months of the lockdown, discussions were initiated with trade associations in order to identify, according to the specificities of each category, the most suitable interventions to meet the dual objective of meeting the economic difficulties of customers, transversally and strongly affected by the effects of the pandemic on consumption and advertising investments, while ensuring a certain continuity in the payment of rights and mitigating, as far as possible, the loss of income.”
Still according to Fiorito, “the approach adopted in dealing with this extraordinary and dramatic circumstance has allowed not only to maintain the relationship of collaboration with customers and trade associations, but also to increase trust in the relationship”.
In this context, SCF has adopted various support measures:
- for users, have been approved measures to reduce fees and defer payments
- for members, on the other hand, a reduction of 50% of the SCF fee on royalties (rights and private copying) has been approved for 2021, as well as for 2020, in favor of producers with an average annual income of less than ten thousand euros in the last three years, a reduction that will be applied starting from the next distribution in June.
It should be noted that in 2020 the tracks declared by the national and international producers of SCF have increased, reaching over 15 million. The number of members registered with SCF is also growing, reaching 467 companies.
Analytical reports by users managed by SCF have increased, reaching almost a thousand, also thanks to the legislation on MLCs, which provides for the mandatory reporting of the new licenses and a strong action by SCF on users.
On the occasion of the Annual General Meeting, the SCF Board of Directors was also renewed with the election of Andrea Cotromano, Corrado Filpa, Mario Limongelli, Alessandro Massara, Gianluca Pojaghi and Raffaele Razzini. The Board appointed Enzo Mazza as chairman and Corrado Filpa as vice chairman.