APRA and CISAC celebrate 100 years of protecting creators’ rights
Organisations founded on opposite sides of the globe unite in Sydney to confront the most significant threat in a generation
The meeting brings together heads of major collective management organisations including ASCAP (US), GEMA (Germany), JASRAC (Japan), PRS for Music (UK), SACEM (France), SAMRO (South Africa), SOCAN (Canada) and UBC (Brazil)
100 years on from when they were both formed on opposite sides of the globe on the principle that creative work carries economic value that must be recognised and protected, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) is meeting in Sydney at a significant moment for the music and creative industries.
The CISAC Board of Directors, which represents 228 societies across 111 countries, is convening in Australia for the first time in 25 years, hosted by Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand music management rights organisation, APRA AMCOS (as the organisation has been known since entering an operational alliance with the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society in 1997).
The meeting brings together heads of major collective management organisations including APRA AMCOS (AU/NZ), ASCAP (US), GEMA (Germany), JASRAC (Japan), PRS for Music (UK), SACEM (France), SAMRO (South Africa), SOCAN (Canada) and UBC (Brazil), as well as organisations like DACS (UK), which manages rights for visual artists, and SACD (France), which manages rights for audiovisual directors and screenwriters.
Together, CISAC members represent over five million creators from all artistic disciplines including music, audiovisual, drama, literature and visual arts, and collect over USD$15 billion in royalties on their behalf.
APRA AMCOS CEO, Dean Ormston, who has been Chair of CISAC since 2025, explains: “APRA and CISAC have been advocating for creators’ rights for 100 years, and to be able to meet on home soil to both celebrate our history and look forward to our next 100 years together is a great honour. We stand strong in our collaboration with CMOs from around the world, united under the CISAC banner, as we advocate for the value of human creativity in the face of the AI revolution.”
CISAC, APRA AMCOS and partner global societies are positioned at the forefront of international copyright debate over Generative AI. APRA AMCOS launched the landmark AI and Music report which set the agenda for Australia’s national debate on AI and music, giving voice to the lived experience of Australian and New Zealand creators navigating a technology that threatens to devalue their work.
A recent CISAC-commissioned global study found that the market size for Generative AI music could reach up to €16 billion annually by 2028, with as much as 24% of music creators’ revenues at risk without effective regulation and licensing frameworks.
APRA AMCOS was central to the coalition that saw Australia become the first major global jurisdiction to reject aText and Data Mining exception into its copyright laws, closing the door on the industrial-scale theft of creative intellectual property and cementing Australia at the forefront of global action for the protection of copyright and ethical AI development.
CISAC Director General Gadi Oron adds: “The scale of transformation we are witnessing today calls for the same collective resolve that defined our founding a century ago. Our responsibility — now as always — is to ensure that innovation strengthens the creative economy rather than diminishes it, and that creators receive a fair share of the value their works generate. Human creativity is the fuel that powers AI systems and it must be protected, respected and fairly remunerated.”
“Creators are the cultural, social and economic fabric of every nation,” concludes Ormston. “Protecting them, and in particular creators of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property, is not optional. It is exactly what APRA, CISAC and our global network of societies exist to do and have existed to do for one hundred years.”
