by Mark Eades
Manager Publisher Services

APRA Distribution Rules have been updated to reflect recent changes in the way APRA distributes royalties for ‘joint works’ (works by two or more writers where the contribution of individuals to the music, the lyrics, or the music and lyrics are indivisible) as opposed to ‘collective works’ (works where the writers contribute music and lyrics to the work separately, so the work is comprised of at least two separate works) where:

• for New Zealand, one of the writers has been deceased for more that 50 years.
• for Australia, one of writers had been deceased for more than 50 years before the introduction of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States on 1 January 2005, or following the introduction of the Free Trade Agreement has been deceased for more than 70 years.

It has been determined that for joint works, the shares of co-composers, co-lyricists or co-composer/lyricists and their publishers are copyright-protected until 50/70 years after the death of the last co-composer, co-lyricist or co-composer/lyricist to pass away. Previously, APRA regarded all shares of writers who had been deceased for more than 50/70 years as ‘out-of-copyright’ regardless of whether the work was written individually, collectively or jointly. Accordingly, APRA allocated shares for joint works in the same manner as for collective works.

Our Distribution department will now be running regular reports that list works where the performing right division-of-fee shows a writer whose society is 000 (DP - public domain) and that have current performing or mechanical right 'activity'. The divisions-of-fee for these works will be reviewed (and registrations and society info researched where necessary) to determine if the DP writer was a joint composer, joint lyricist or joint composer/lyricist with another writer. If so, the DP writer's share will be reinstated, and if the work's payment history or a publisher registration indicates a different publisher for that DP writer's share to the publisher of the other shares, that publisher share will also be reinstated and queries will be directed to the affected publishers if required (i.e. due to a registration that 'disputes' the reinstated share). In this way, we will endeavour to bring works which are affected by this rule to our publisher members’ attention as necessary.

We also request that if our members are aware of any joint works in which you may have a reinstated publishing interest under these revised rules (particularly joint works in catalogues which you have previously advised your overseas principals you were unable to claim), you should now register such works and bring them to the attention of myself or your publisher representative.

Please note that this change brings our distribution rules into line with UK and American rules, so if/when publishers are asked to check your claims for any works we identify as part of this process, please just ask your principal to advise you of their ordinary claim and register this, knowing that from now on we will accept claims on behalf of writers who have been deceased for more than 50/70 years where they were co-composers, co-authors or co-composer/authors with writers who have been deceased for less than 50/70 years.

Please refer to sections 6.4 and 6.5 of the updated APRA Distribution Rules for more details.