Many music creators from here and around the world earn an income by granting organisations, like ours, the right to collect and pay their royalties when a business plays the music they make.

Your OneMusic licence fee is distributed by APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ, who are the companies behind OneMusic. Each organisation has a commitment to their music creators and their own distribution policies.

How it works:

When you hear about music royalties, that’s what we do.

Organisations like APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ exist around the world. Together we represent the vast repertoire of music with a wealth of data about what music is being used. From our databases we determine fairly and efficiently which music creators to pay and how much to pay them.

Income is matched to the data we collect from digital music services, background music suppliers, radio stations, television stations, live performers and more. This is then distributed to the songwriters, composers, publishers, recording artists and record labels who make and own the music you use in your business.

What we do isn’t simple, but we make it simple for you.

Where businesses can easily report exactly what songs they’ve played, this is used to pay out licence fees to music creators.

Where it’s too time consuming, unrealistic, and not cost effective to collect and process exact reporting from businesses, we use music data from similar sources, such as radio stations, digital music services, background music suppliers, and more.

Types of Distribution Methods:

• Direct Allocation – royalties are distributed via comprehensive reporting to ensure that all reported works and recordings (subject to any thresholds that may apply) share in the distribution of the corresponding licence fees.
• Sample – royalties are distributed via a representative sample of performances (which may be in relation to a particular tariff, licence scheme or group thereof), where it is inappropriate, unfeasible, or not economically viable to provide a Direct Allocation.
• Analogous – 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.

It’s about striking an efficient balance, which is why we do not expect you to supply us with your song lists.

The following represents the main sources of music data that one or both organisations use to make their distributions to music creators:

• Individual commercial, public, community, iwi and student radio, and both commercial and regional television stations reporting the music they broadcast;
• Digital music services;
• Services using Music Recognition Technology like digital fingerprinting and audio-recognition to match performances/broadcasts;
• Data from music providers who supply programmed curated music for specific industries;
• Background Music Suppliers who provide us with music reports from their clients’ playlists; and
• Set lists of musical works performed by artists and musicians at live/dance events and festivals supplied to APRA by event promoters.

After administration costs of approximately 13%, all income collected by OneMusic is paid to APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ, for ongoing distribution to local and international music creators.

Click each organisation to find out more about their own distribution practices and policies: