APRA AMCOS collects licence fees from Australian and New Zealand gyms and fitness centres.
APRA AMCOS licenses fitness businesses for three main uses of music: music in fitness classes, music outside of fitness classes, and digital copy/delivery of music for those first two uses. All licence fees are distributed using analogous data sources.
APRA - music in fitness classes:
38% of these licence fees are distributed based on music reports received from providers of fitness programs. Of the remaining 62% of these fees, half are distributed across our radio royalty distribution pools, and half to a weighted aggregate pool of music streamed on the largest digital music services.
APRA - music outside of fitness classes (e.g. played as background music in gym including television screens):
all licences fees for this use of music are distributed to music sources received separately by APRA, 50% according to free-to-air television broadcast data, 25% to radio broadcast data and 25% to music streaming data.
AMCOS - digital copy/delivery:
Where businesses use their own music devices, an AMCOS licence is required to authorise the use of music in a non-domestic environment. Licence fees are distributed to music streaming data.
The records provided by providers of fitness programs are directly matched to the vast repertoire of songs in our database. For all analogous royalty distributions (i.e. radio, TV, streaming), the song matching process takes place within those distribution pools according to the rules for that source.
APRA’s distribution policy for music reports received from providers of music for fitness classes uses a ‘points’ system to determine royalties to be allocated to each song. Songs analysed from the fitness program source receive credits on the same basis as radio, except songs that have a reported performance duration over 5 minutes 59 seconds receive four credit points per minute for the full duration of the song, plus one credit for each additional 15 seconds (or part thereof).
See the Commercial Radio, Commercial TV and Background Music Information Guides for more information.
The AMCOS licence fee is distributed by analogy to a discrete pool using Spotify and Apple Music Premium individual subscriber data.
How points are used to calculate the royalty amount payable for each song
Music in classes:
Once we have analysed the fitness program music reports and the points have been calculated for all songs, 38% of revenue collected from fitness licence fees is divided by the total sum of all points, resulting in a $ rate per point. This rate is then multiplied by the number of points given to a song, resulting in the royalty amount payable for that song.
Once we have calculated the amount payable for a song, we can pay that amount to the copyright owner of the work. If the copyright owner is not a member of APRA or AMCOS but is a member of an affiliated overseas society, we pay that society.
Other uses: Royalties are calculated and paid according to the rules for the various radio, television and streaming pools. The streaming data we use is limited to those works receiving 1,000 or more streams on either Spotify or Apple’s premium subscriber services.
Distributions for Australian and New Zealand fitness licence fees are calculated and paid quarterly.
View our information guide on Unidentified Songs and Disputes for more information.
Songs:
The Copyright Act refers to compositions, musical scores in the form of sheet music, broadsheets or other notation as musical works. Lyrics or words to a song are considered literary works. When we refer to songs, we are referring to all the elements of a musical/literary work protected by copyright.
Analogy:
Royalties are distributed via distribution pools (or by copying datasets) that are most similar in terms of a licensee’s music content. This method is used when Direct Allocation or Sample reporting is impractical.
This fact sheet is a guide only. Refer to our full Distribution Rules and Practices for more information.