SA music industry valued at R2bn in 2020 – SOTS report

The first edition of the annual report was officially released this week. It assesses the economics of the South African music industry by taking an in-depth look at the revenues generated by a number of organisations based on their financial reports. Among the key objectives of the study is to encourage robust discussions among the industry’s stakeholders.

The study zooms in on collective management organisations (CMOs) by providing an account of the real rand value of their licensing activities, making it a first-of-its-kind report to be compiled in South Africa.

SOTS, which is a network of curators and music industry professionals that brings together creatives from across southern Africa, says such information is critical for an ongoing assessment of how well the music industry is doing as well as looking at what else can be done to improve processes within the industry.

“The study was motivated by the need for data. In recent years we've seen the explosion of the African Music market and investment from various stakeholders,” SOTS spokesperson Phil Chard said. “It is important that everyone in the entertainment industry value chain is making data driven decisions that encourage further investment, which will then lead to growth ... We feel such reports have been difficult to undertake in the past because of a lack of easily accessible data and transparency. Even within this report, not all the necessary data was easily available.”

Traditional non-streaming sources of publishing revenue accounted for 75% of all revenue generated during that year, the report says. Despite collections dropping by about 9.9% globally, local CMOs returned R900m in royalties in 2020 – the top three royalty collectors being the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (52%), the Composers, Authors and Publishers Association (25.2%) and the South African Music Performance Rights Association (18.6%).

Other contributors collected less than 5% of total royalty collections: RiSA Audio Visual (2.5%), the Independent Music Performance Rights association (IMPRA) (1.1%) and the Association of Independent Record Companies South Africa (0.5%). However, this figure was restricted by an absence of financial reports and is therefore based on data from the SABC as in the case of IMPRA.

South African CMOs had a cumulative R1.5bn in royalties as they closed off their respective financial years. Meanwhile, more than R760m was generated in publishing revenue across the industry in 2020. This includes direct licences from digital service providers, which contributed about 25%, as well as sync royalties collected directly by rightsholders, which were estimated to be double the value collected for sound recording revenues.

The recording industry is valued at R787m or 50.7% of total industry revenues. This comprises earnings for both independent and DIY artists, and contributes slightly more than publishing business (49.3%).

Another key finding was that the publishing and recording sectors were nearly equal in size (50.7% versus 49.3%) in the local industry. This is unusual when juxtaposed to earnings in international music markets where recording revenues typically outperform publishing business.

Download the SOTS – ZA Music Industry Report below (PDF).