In an unusual move but interesting move, three Nordic rights collecting societies – KODA, TONO and TEOSTO – announced at Midem 2012 that they are joining forces to share the back-end for their IT services. The goal is to reduce processing costs while meeting the needs of their respective members.

Since 2008, Denmark’s KODA and Norway’s TONO have been working together to develop shared IT systems. Now Finland’s TEOSTO has announced it will join the effort. Together, the three organizations intend to expand and accelerate the plans for developing common back-end systems.

“We hope to improve our services, and our aim is to continue to be the natural and attractive partner for all music rights holders in Finland. This requires modern and up-to-date IT systems that are capable of meeting the needs of TEOSTO’s members and customers,” says TEOSTO CEO Katri Sipilä. “Joining the TONO-KODA partnership is a natural step for us to ensure that we can continue to offer the best service possible”.

The three organizations aim to work together to develop a common system for distribution, member services and other IT-systems. They will also look into options for connecting the back-end to a works database.

“This means getting more bang for the buck,” says KODA CEO Anders Lassen. “Working closely together with like-minded sister societies is the logical thing to do in order to save costs and ensuring that we continue to have top-of-the-line systems in a rapidly changing world.”

Important role of collection societies

The organizations aim to sign a Letter of Intent within a few months and subsequently begin building a common organization to handle its development.

“TONO believes the national collecting societies will have a very important role to play in the years to come: We know the local market and can ensure unsurpassed value for rights holders. But we also need to be able to provide this service at a competitive cost. The only right choice is to join forces with other societies with whom we share common goals and processes,” says TONO CEO Cato Strøm.

There can be little doubt that collection societies are very similar operations, and therefore could easily share development and/or running costs for large sections of their work. This initiative is the first of its kind that we know of.