Tips and advice

Keep control over your contracts

Let our legal team give you advice when you are negotiating a contract and consult our specialists before you sign it.

Do not assign your rights in their entirety and for an indefinite period.

Rights reservation clause in the audiovisual sector

Don’t forget to include a provision in your contracts stipulating that the broadcast, video-on-demand and reproduction rights are to be administered by SSA in certain countries (for a list of the countries, please see model contracts).

Work registration

Make sure you register your works with SSA in time so that the use of your works can be monitored. Furthermore, the work registration also serves the purpose to establish any potential co-authorships of third parties and determines the distribution key between all parties.

How to declare works used abroad

Please alert us to any foreign-language uses of your works that you know of; in fact, any information we receive on foreign uses is helpful.

How to register specific uses

Please inform us if you find out about your works being used, but have possibly not been registered by the users, such as adaptations, translations, partial uses of the work in another work, recordings of publicly performed works, reproductions, digital use via internet etc.

Rights assignment

To be a full member of SSA means that our members are obliged to let SSA handle all licensing agreements and collection processes. This applies automatically to all works created after you have joined SSA.

Authors = Producers

Special conditions apply if the authors are producers of a performance at the same time and also in cases where the author is the same person as the performing artist.