Licensing & royalties
Neighboring Rights Clearance
Neighboring rights, also called related rights, are the rights of performers and phonogram producers in a recording, alongside the author rights in the composition. Neighboring rights clearance is the process of securing the permissions and settling the payments owed to those parties when a recording is broadcast, played in public or otherwise exploited.
In practice
In most of Europe, broadcasting or publicly playing a commercial recording triggers an equitable-remuneration payment split between performers and the producer, collected by dedicated societies (SCF and Nuovo IMAIE in Italy, GVL in Germany, PPL in the UK, SPPF and Adami in France). This sits on top of author royalties. Venues, radio stations and broadcasters therefore often pay twice for the same track. Session performers on a bespoke recording should sign releases assigning or waiving these claims, or a future broadcast can generate an unexpected bill.
How SoniBuyout® handles it
Sonify recordings are not registered with any collecting society and the performer rights are consolidated before sale, so there is no neighbouring-rights stream attached to the track. Playing or broadcasting it does not create a payable claim from a performer society.
Real questions
Are neighbouring rights the same as performance rights?
No. Performance rights concern the authors of the composition and are collected by author societies. Neighbouring rights concern the performers and the producer of the recording and are collected by separate societies.
Does a buyout remove neighbouring-rights obligations?
Only if the recording carries no registered performer or producer claims. A buyout of a track already registered with a performer society will not stop those collections; a purpose-produced, unregistered recording avoids them entirely.
Related terms
Own the track instead of renting it
Sonify Music sells exclusive buyouts of catalogue tracks: one payment, full ownership, the track removed from sale and a named certificate of ownership.