The PPNZ licensing team contact hundreds of New Zealand businesses each week regarding their music use and in particular, whether businesses are playing the recorded music of our members. They generally do this by phone, email and letters.
From May 2011, this team is being supported by our PPNZ SoundCheck programme, which sees SoundCheck team members personally visiting businesses around the country to gather actual market knowledge on how and where our members’ music is being used.
A critical element of our service to artists, labels and current/potential licensees is ensuring we are as informed as we can be about individual business music use. This means not only knowing when businesses are playing our members’ music – but also when they are not.
Our aim is to gather the information we need to deal with licensees in a more informed way, so we can not only approach those clearly playing our members repertoire, but when we can, avoid contacting those who do not. The market knowledge we gather will be used to begin discussions with businesses that may not be aware of their legal obligations or those who have failed to respond to our previous correspondence.
In some cases, where the unauthorised use of our members’ music continues, this information may be used in legal proceedings on behalf of our members. We initiate these proceedings to not only represent our members who music is being used without their permission, but also to be fair to the thousands of other businesses who do hold an appropriate licence.
If you have any questions about our SoundCheck programme or our licensing activities in general, please contact us on 0800 88 77 69 or email info@ppnz.co.nz.
