The Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers (abbreviated SGAE in Spanish) has been fined 6.38 million euros (more than $6.9 million, using the average 2023 conversion rate) by the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) for anti-competitive practices related to its licensing deals with radio and TV stations.
SGAE has been fined for “two infractions of abuse of dominant position” by designing and applying its licensing rates in a manner that forces radio and TV operators to accept an “averaged availability rate” (comparable to a flat rate) to be able to use its repertoire, according to a CNMC press release on Wednesday (June 26). The widespread application of the flat rate by the Spanish collecting society “has had a double anti-competitive effect,” the CNMC says. The first effect, which the CNMC refers to as “exploitative abuse,” results from SGAE’s practice of forcing licensees to pay the flat rate “unrelated to the actual use they make of their repertoire, both in terms of the number of works and the intensity of their use,” according to the release, which states this practice has been ongoing since “at least” Jan.
1, 2016. Because licensees are forced to pay the flat rate regardless of the extent of their use of SGAE’s repertoire, the CNMC adds, licensees’ incentives to contract with SGAE competitors with less substantial repertoires are limited — a second anti-competitive effect that hinders “the entry and expansion�.