"Entire advertising industry thrown out on its ear".

Since the beginning of this year, the collecting society Suisa has been charging advertisers a new license fee for music in commercials for online campaigns or on microsites. What was previously compensated with a flat rate of 100 to 200 francs now costs considerably more. Suisa now wants advertisers to pay the authors of music up to 3.3 percent of the online media budget as "making available".

The advertisers' association SWA is not only upset about the amount of the fee, but also about the entire procedure. Clients would now have to send their confidential media plans to Suisa, which would then calculate the license fees on this basis. If the music does not run during the entire spot, the percentage will be reduced accordingly.

A time-consuming process, which in many cases the agencies would have to take over for their customers and which would also mean a lot of manual work for Suisa. "All this at a time when digital advertising in particular is being planned, booked and optimized in an increasingly automated way," the SWA criticized in a statement. The changes are "completely incomprehensible, disproportionate and impracticable".

The SWA finds it particularly disturbing that the same compensation in favor of the authors on television and radio is borne by the broadcasters, while Suisa wants to enforce a different system on the Internet of all places and directly sue the advertising clients for it. For a moving image campaign of 100,000 Swiss francs with continuous music, this means additional costs of 3,300 Swiss francs for copyrights alone.

The SWA criticizes that the advertising clients had already commissioned and paid a composer in good faith for the creation and use of music for a commercial.

With its behavior, Suisa had offended the entire advertising industry and, above all, had angered the advertising clients. The collecting society had failed to negotiate these new license prices with the industry in good time and to inform them.

Because the exploitation of online rights is subject to free competition throughout Europe, Suisa has not yet been forced to negotiate at all. Nevertheless, Suisa is dependent on good cooperation with the advertising industry, also in the interest of the composers they represent.

Together with the SWA, the associations Leading Swiss Agencies (LSA), Allianz Schweizer Werbeagenturen (ASW), Interessengemeinschaft Elektronische Medien (IGEM), IAB Switzerland as well as the Goldbach Group have fought against the new practice in recent months. However, Suisa was not prepared to back down from the process and the licensing costs at the expense of the advertising clients.

The SWA therefore decided last week to reject the new license fees and the lawsuit, the statement said. At the same time, the association expects Suisa to seek a solution with the platforms that technically distribute the commercials on the Internet for compensation for making them available. In this regard, the SWA is prepared to commit itself to such a solution as well and has held initial talks to this end. For the SWA, it is undisputed that the authors of music should also be fairly compensated on the Internet. However, as in TV and radio, such a licensing model would have to start with the broadcasters or the platforms and not with the advertisers. (hae/pd)