DIMA Comments on Colombia Draft General Culture Law
Mr. Juan David Correa
Minister of Culture
8th Avenue No.8-26
9 August 2024
Subject: Comments on the Draft General Culture Law
Dear Minister Correa,
The Digital Media Association (DIMA) is pleased to participate in the public consultation on the draft reform document of the General Culture Law. The Ministry of Culture’s efforts in promoting initiatives aimed at strengthening the cultural sector in the country are laudable. The significance of this project is indisputable, as it seeks to enhance the instruments and regulations that advance the dignity of artists, creators, workers, and all participants within cultural ecosystems across all sectors. However, after a thorough analysis of the draft proposal, DIMA would like to present some observations and recommendations, particularly with respect to provisions around the creation of an equitable remuneration to performers. We believe these considerations are important to consider in order to avoid an adverse effect on the entire music industry.
About DIMA
DIMA represents the world’s leading music streaming companies: Amazon, Apple Music, Feed.fm, YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify. DIMA’s mission is to promote and protect the ability of music fans to legally engage with creative content whenever and wherever they want it, and for artists to more easily reach longtime fans and make new ones. Streaming is growing the value of music: according to IFPI, in 2023, 85.2% of revenue for recorded music in Latin America came from streaming revenues – a “region that in 2023 saw its thirteenth consecutive year of growth with its market now worth $1.3 billion USD.”
DIMA members are committed to licensing the rights needed to offer their services and fairly compensate rightsholders for the use of their work, who in turn are responsible for ensuring a fair and sustainable compensation system for artists and songwriters. The existing legal framework in Colombia already obligates services to license multiple separate streams of rights for music, including from record labels, music publishers, and existing collective management societies, and we are proud that our model is yielding record revenues for the benefit of artists, songwriters, and the music industry as a whole. Music streaming has been a success story for Colombia: the total value of the music market in Colombia more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, and so did the recorded music industry revenues from streaming during this period.[1]
[1] IFPI Global Music Report 2024.
Comments to the draft proposal
Article 33
This article proposes to declare copyrights and related rights as inalienable, which could have a profound impact on the music industry by restricting artists’ ability to exercise their exclusive rights to control their performance and deprive them of the right to transfer their rights to producers and labels. This restriction would diminish artists’ freedom to exploit their works as they choose thereby complicating their distribution and commercialization agreements. Furthermore, the article reintroduces provisions that were previously deemed unconstitutional, as it essentially reiterates a clause from the 1997 Culture Law, which was partially declared unenforceable by the Constitutional Court. The Court’s decision underscored that these rights were not entirely inalienable and emphasized the necessity of balancing the protection of authors’ rights with the operational needs of the industry.
Articles 34.1 and 34.2
This article aims to create an equitable remuneration entitlement for artists who have assigned their works to producers, and such remuneration shall be paid to collecting societies. We are concerned that this change would disrupt the current copyright licensing framework and payments currently made within it. Specifically, it could require financial compensation for the mere availability of music, without necessitating a direct connection between the specific use of the work and the remuneration managed by record labels. In addition, as mentioned above, the licensing of music rights and distribution of associated royalties is already incredibly complex; the government should not make that system more complicated by requiring artists to receive royalties from yet another intermediary. Notably, collective management organizations are not a typical party in the licensing of performers’ rights, and the responsibility for passing digital services’ payments to performers lies with the rights holders (record labels and distributors) to whom music streaming services already pay for the use of sound recordings. The health of the music industry depends on sustainability and certainty, which require predictable costs and the ability to earn a reasonable return on investment. Under the current system, record labels gather multiple creative contributions into a sound recording, and license it to DSPs. Burdens and impacts should be carefully evaluated before considering any type of new payment models, to prevent upending the system and creating unintentional and added complexities that could ultimately harm creators.
DIMA members already license the appropriate rights for music available on their services and pay approximately 70% of music revenue to rights holders through existing licensing arrangements with labels, distributors, publishers and collecting societies. They already pay royalties to record labels for the rights required to license their sound recordings on the services, and that includes applicable rights to artists.
Requiring music streaming services to make additional payments beyond what they already pay to rights holders would effectively amount to duplicative payment and introduce substantial, costly operational complexity into rights administration and payments, and would potentially lead to lower advances or other complications to the label-artist partnerships. That added administrative complexity, related costs, and unintended consequences throughout the music sector are harms that must be factored into any evaluation of new frameworks for music licensing. It is also imperative to stress that new costs would make streaming business in Colombia unsustainable, with negative consequences for the quality and availability of services to consumers and the music rightsholders alike.
We respectfully recommend that articles 33 and 34-1 and 34-2 be removed from the proposal. We truly believe that doing so can contribute to making the bill more effective and better aligned with the actual needs of all stakeholders within the music, and broader cultural sectors. We are available to provide further elaboration on any of these points or to engage in additional discussions on the subject.
We appreciate your consideration of our comments and look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
