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Russian authors’ society filed suit against music festival Nashestvie for missing royalties

Russian authors’ society, the Russian collective management organisation, having state accreditation for collection and distribution of royalties for public performance right in offline environment, has filed a suit against organizer of music festival Nashestvie 2018 for unpaid royalties.

Russian authors’ society has received state accreditation for public performance right in offline environment. This accreditation introduces the presumption of representation, what means that this CMO can collect royalties for public performance even for those authors, who did not provide CMO with authority to do this.

Organizer of music festival has claimed to Russian authors’ society that the festival has attended about 8 thousand people, in other words the organizer has sold about 8 thousand tickets to this festival. From each sold ticket the organizer has pay RAO certain sum – percentage from the ticket price – as a royalties for public performance. RAO has received the sum for 8 thousand tickets. But later it has discovered that much more people has attended the festival – about 200 thousand people.

On the web-site, dedicated to Nashestvie 2018, and on web-site of local ministry of internal affairs, ensuring security on festival, it was stated that the festival has attended more than 200 thousand people. Therefore the RAO has calculated royalties on its own. On ticket it has been stated that the number of ticket copies was 100 thousands of tickets. Then the RAO has multiplied this quantity on the minimal ticket price (about 50 dollars) and received the total minimum sum of gross harvest from sold tickets.

The total approximately royalty sum from sold tickets amounted to 8 and one quarter million Roubles (5% from ticket price). The organizers have paid RAO 800 thousand Roubles, therefore the suit seeks almost 7 and half of million Roubles of unpaid royalties. The RAO several times asked the organisers to pay the missing sum, but unsuccessful. Six months after it decided to sui them.