Record result for TONO in 2012

– EUR 46.9 million distributed to rights holders in Norway and abroad

(Oslo, 5 July 2013) TONO, the Norwegian performing rights society, recorded the organisation’s best ever result in 2012. Consequently EUR 46.9 million could be distributed to rights holders in Norway and abroad. Streaming services were the greatest growth-driver during the year.

TONO’s total operating revenues for 2012 came in at EUR 56,4 million, an increase of 6 per cent against the previous year’s figure of EUR 53.2 million which was also a 6 per cent increase compared to 2010.

“Revenues for 2012 were significantly up on the previous year. This is particularly pleasing because it shows that both consumers and music services consider music an attractive and valued commodity. It also shows that TONO is able to secure fair remunerations for music creators both in Norway and belonging to sister societies in other countries. At 130 per cent, year-on-year growth in the online sector was particularly exciting,” explains TONO CEO, Cato Strøm.

Online growth of 130 per cent
Scandinavia is spearheading developments in the new music economy. Online revenues for TONO climbed from EUR 2.78 million in 2011 to EUR 6.34 million in 2012. In addition to performance-related revenues from TONO, rights owners also received income from the mechanical split of streaming from the Nordic Copyright Bureau (NCB), in which TONO is a shareholder. This brought the total income received by rights owners from the online sector via TONO/NCB to EUR 8.87 million.

“The market for digital music sales is now much larger than the market for the sale of physical media, and will probably soon be twice as large. The use of streaming services is increasing faster in Norway than in any other country in the world. Agreements with Spotify and WiMP are generating the highest revenues, though we are also witnessing strong growth in other services such as Beat.no and the film streaming service Altibox. TONO’s annual online revenues have doubled since 2008, and we would be surprised if these did not continue to rise over the next few years,” explains Strøm.

POLARIS Nordic alliance
In order to reduce costs and further enhance the quality of the services, TONO, Koda and Teosto have formed the “Polaris Nordic” alliance. The future role of Polaris Nordic is to develop and run a joint back-end system for music reporting and distribution of the revenues collected by the organizations.

“Our authors and publishers have an expectation that we continuously strive to distribute to them as much and as effective as we can possibly do. POLARIS Nordic will be one of the tools to achieve this”, says Strøm.

For further information, please contact:
Willy Martinsen, Director of Communications, TONO, mobile +47 909 65 254, e-mail: willy.martinsen@tono.no

About TONO:
Founded in 1928, TONO is a non-profit cooperative, which is owned and managed by its members: composers, songwriters, authors and music publishers. TONO administers performing rights for musical compositions in Norway and collects remuneration for their public performance. TONO currently represents around 23,000 Norwegian composers, authors and music publishers. Through mutual representation agreements with similar societies in other countries TONO effectively administers a global repertoire. As a non-profit organisation TONO’s net income is passed on to the rights holders in performed works. TONO thus facilitates use of music by society, at the same time as enabling its members to constantly produce new musical compositions.