Neighbouring rights are the master-side cousin of performance royalties: the money paid to performers and master owners when a sound recording is publicly performed on radio, TV, in venues, or on certain digital services.
Performance royalties pay the songwriter and publisher. Neighbouring rights pay the performer and the master owner. Both fire on the same public play. Both flow through different collecting societies. Most indie artists never claim them.
This guide is for artists, session musicians, and labels who want the half of broadcast royalties their distributor never mentions.
What are neighbouring rights?
Neighbouring rights, also called “related rights” or “rights neighbouring on copyright,” are the rights of performers and master owners to be paid when their recording is publicly used. The legal foundation is the Rome Convention (1961) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (1996), which together obligate signatory countries to recognise and remunerate these rights.
The royalty pays two parties on every qualifying public performance.
- The featured performer — the headline artist on the recording.
- The non-featured performers — session musicians, backing vocalists, the drummer who never gets credit.
The master owner (often the label, sometimes the artist) collects its own share separately, usually equal to the performer share. Splits and definitions vary by jurisdiction.
Why do neighbouring rights exist?
Because the same logic that pays the songwriter when a song is played also applies to the people who made the recording. The drummer on a 1980s soul record does not get paid every time the song streams on Spotify (Spotify is a different model), but they do get paid every time it plays on UK radio, in a German café, on Brazilian terrestrial TV, or on a US webcast.
Without neighbouring rights, the entire master-side broadcast economy would collect for labels only, and session musicians would be cut out of an income stream their work clearly drove.
The US is the structural exception that everyone in the global industry knows. The US does not recognise neighbouring rights for terrestrial radio. AM/FM stations pay songwriters via ASCAP/BMI but pay nothing to performers or master owners. The US does pay for digital non-interactive performances via SoundExchange. This is why a UK soul singer collects more from American digital radio plays than they do from being on US AM radio. The legal asymmetry is decades old and still unfixed.
How do neighbouring rights work in practice?
The flow:
- A broadcaster, venue, or qualifying digital service pays an annual fee to the local neighbouring-rights society.
- The society logs usage by ISRC.
- Matches feed into reciprocal-agreement databases shared with sister societies in other countries.
- Performer share and master-owner share are calculated.
- Money flows out, usually two to four times a year, with a six-to-eighteen-month lag.
Major societies by region:
- United States (digital only) — SoundExchange.
- United Kingdom — PPL.
- France — SCPP / SPPF (master) and Adami / Spedidam (performers).
- Germany — GVL.
- Japan — CPRA.
- Brazil — ABRAMUS, SOCINPRO, and others under ECAD.
- South Africa — SAMPRA.
- Nigeria — currently administered through MCSN’s reciprocal framework, though dedicated standalone neighbouring-rights collection is structurally weak.
What neighbouring rights mean for African artists
This is the section where the global guides go vague. The real picture.
Africa is the largest geographic black hole for neighbouring rights collection. Most African countries are signatories to the Rome Convention and WIPO treaties on paper, but functional collection societies that log radio play, license venues, and pay out to performers exist in only a handful of territories. South Africa (SAMPRA) is the strongest. Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire have CMOs that exist but collect inconsistently.
The export story is what matters most for Afrobeats and Amapiano artists. Your record gets heavy radio play in the UK, France, Germany, and Brazil. Those countries collect for that play. If you are not registered with PPL, GVL, SACEM-adjacent neighbouring societies, and SCPP, that money sits in the black box for three years and then redistributes to local repertoire. You can claim it via a UK or EU-based neighbouring-rights agent who registers your catalog with the relevant societies. Expect 15-25% commission. The math still wins.
Non-featured performers on Afrobeats records are systematically uncredited. The session keys player on a Burna Boy record is entitled to a non-featured share at PPL on every UK play. If they are not credited in the recording metadata, no claim is possible. Credit your sessions in writing.
Common neighbouring-rights mistakes and gotchas
- Confusing them with performance royalties. Two different collections, two different societies, two different sets of paperwork.
- Assuming your distributor handles them. Almost no distributor collects neighbouring rights. It is a separate registration with a neighbouring-rights agent or directly with the society.
- No ISRC, no claim. The match key globally is the ISRC. Missing or duplicated ISRCs kill the match.
- Featured-artist registration only. Registering only the headline performer leaves non-featured shares unclaimed. List the band.
- Registering only with your home society. Sister-society payouts to your home society are often slower and lossier than registering directly with the foreign society via an agent.
- Ignoring the US digital pot. SoundExchange pays even non-US artists for US digital airplay (Pandora, SiriusXM, internet radio). Free money if you register.
- Three-year claim window. Most societies write off unclaimed shares after three to five years. Register before the clock runs out.
How InterSpace Distribution handles this
InterSpace Distribution preserves clean ISRC and contributor metadata on every release and partners with neighbouring-rights agents who specialise in African catalog representation at PPL, GVL, SCPP, SoundExchange, and other major societies. Get started at cms.interspacemusic.com/signup.