Picture Industry Collecting Society for Effective Licensing

News of this year’s distribution.

2021 Publications Distribution

We are delighted to announce that not only has this year’s CLA “pot” grown by 4.5%, but that PICSEL’s share has increased by 5%. With newly secured revenue streams this year, the overall increase in the amount available for distribution has increased by 11%.

After several years of negotiations, the following new revenue streams are included this year.

• Backdated German levy revenue, paid to CLA by VG Wort, has been secured at an improved rate, adding £71,000 to the distribution. We will continue to receive a share of this revenue stream going forward.
• We have also secured your share of the VA revenue that previously went exclusively to DACS from Prolitteris in Switzerland. This will add a further £6,110 to this year’s distribution and be included in future distributions.

We have also secured the following for distribution next year once the numbers have been finalised.

• Retrospective levy royalties that were previously paid exclusively to DACS by Bildkunst in Germany.

I must add caution that this 11% increase does not mean that your own claim will increase by 11%. As always, payments depend on matching, and the numbers claimed.

We are all deeply grateful to the CLA for the impressive work they’ve done, in year 1 of the pandemic, to secure license revenue for 2020 and beyond. Whilst the outlook in March 2020 was a concern, it improved month by month to the point that by April 2021 CLA could report a record year, for the second year in a row.

The future is also looking good at CLA with long term licenses signed, securing the majority of their license revenue.

Unfortunately, PLS revenue is down on last year for all VACMOs with some significant B2B publishers moving to NLA, namely Incisive Media and William Reed Business Media. The result has been a fall of 14% in the amount available to VACMOs from PLS.

This is the strongest reason yet for ensuring that you retain secondary rights in any publisher agreements that you sign.

The publishers who have moved to NLA claim to hold all rights in the content of their publications, and resent sharing any royalties. At NLA they do not have to share the royalties with anybody if their contracts secure secondary rights.

Note that we have begun a 2 year long process of negotiating the % allocated to publishers, authors and visual artists for magazine royalties. We will be seeking evidence from you next year to prove that you do not hand over secondary rights in publisher agreements that you sign. This will strengthen our case for increasing the % for visual artists in a rapidly changing digital environment.

Improved IT at CLA means that the distribution will be made earlier than was possible in previous years. We will make every effort to get this to you in early August, and shall continue to find and secure royalties that you are entitled to in the coming years.

Thank you for making this all possible.