Copyright in musical works does not generate money for artistes. It is the royalties generated from granting licenses to users that reward creativity. It is however a herculean task for artistes to negotiate licenses with all users, particularly institutional users like clubs, hotels, broadcast stations, salons etc. Whilst artistes focus on creativity, copyright collecting societies (CSS) have been created by law, worldwide for the granting of licenses, collection and distribution of royalties to the artistes. It therefore makes economic and administrative sense for artistes to join CSS by assigning their rights to them in order to monitor the use, negotiate and grant licenses, collect and distribute royalties to the artistes, and sue on behalf of the artistes, in the event of unauthorized use and failure to pay royalties.
