Meet the rights holders
Who’s who in the music business
The composer
The composer is a person who writes music/melodies. It is typically works expressed in written musical notation, but it also includes people who create songs through improvisation and recording.
The lyricist
The lyricist or songwriter is an individual who writes lyrics and sometimes melodies and chord progressions for songs/melodies. Co-creation and songwriters’ collectives, where several songwriters work together to write a song, is becoming very common.
The publisher
Music publishers help the songwriters and composers they represent to promote their musical work to recording artists, exploit commercial interests and manage licensing requests.
The record company
The record company, or record label, is associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. They coordinate the production, distribution, marketing and promotion activities, and administer the rights to sound recordings and music videos. In addition, they do talent scouting and maintain contracts with recording artists and their managers.
The organization
The members of NCB are the Nordic performing rights societies – Koda in Denmark, STEF in Iceland, STIM in Sweden, Teosto in Finland and TONO in Norway.
NCB owns 50% of the shares in NMP – Network of Music Partners A/S – a joint venture owned by NCB and PRS for Music (the music copyright society in the UK). NMP provides back office services to the music copyright administration industry.
From April 1, 2017, NCB has entered into a back office cooperation agreement with Koda based on which Koda will supply mechanical rights licenses and administrative services to NCB. The agreement with Koda safe-guards the interest of authors, composers and music publishers. Authors, composers, music publishers and foreign collective rights management societies can continue to expect a second-to-none service from NCB also in the coming years.
Koda has the responsibility for the delivery of the services described in the cooperation agreement between Koda and NCB. Koda has of august 2019 appointed Market Director, Camilla Kjær Hejselbæk, to manage the day-to-day business of NCB, cf. Section 9 of the Danish Act on collective management of copyright and related rights.
NCB’s board of directors oversees that the cooperation agreement is complied with by Koda.
As of July 1, 2020, NCB will no longer include the Baltic territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in our territories.
The co-operation agreements between NCB and the Baltic societies EAÜ in Estonia, AKKA-LAA in Latvia and LATGA in Lithuania has been replaced with reciprocal representation agreements with each Baltic society by July 1, 2020.
The contact persons for the Baltic societies are:
EAÜ: Margus-Koit Kivistik – margus@eau.org
AKKA-LAA: Anita Sosnovska – Anita.Sosnovska@akka-laa.lv
and Imants Belogrivs – Imants.Belogris@akka-laa.lv
LATGA: Paulius Sartatavicius – paulius@latga.lt
NCB is approved by the Danish Ministry of Culture regarding musical authors’ mechanical rights in services covered by the Danish Copyright Act, Section 35, subsection 4 and 5, cfr. Section 50.
Our role in the musical rights landscape
NCB is the connection between creators and users of music. We collect license fees from the music users and ensure that rights holders get their rightful share of royalties.
The Nordic performing rights societies – KODA in Denmark, STEF in Iceland, STIM in Sweden, TEOSTO in Finland and TONO in Norway – administer the performance rights when music is played, performed or in any other way communicated to the public.
Rights holder? This is how it works
How much?
Our commission rates vary for various products, and is also is dependent on whether it is NCB or one of our foreign partners who has collected the royalty payment. See the current rates here.
Commission ratesWhen?
In most cases, we distribute royalties twice a year – in June and December –for sales made during the previous six months. Royalties collected from outside the Nordic region may take longer, as we don’t have agreements with all collecting societies worldwide. You’ll find your royalty statement on your national society’s website.
How to read the royalty statementNCB's position on AI
Reservation of text and data mining for use in artificial intelligence (AI)
NCB wants to ensure that the copyright-protected works represented by NCB in no way becomes part of the development and training of AI unless permitted through a license. This includes – but is not limited to – language models, foundation models, generative AI-systems, recommendation algorithms and collection of metadata/statistics.
NCB is a collective management organization that administers the economic rights to the music that belongs to the natural or legal persons that has entrusted NCB with their rights or are affiliated with NCB (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Rightsholders”).
NCB expressly reserves the right to produce copies for text and data mining in accordance with article 4 in Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC.
The reservation means that all use of works represented by NCB at any given time, with the purpose of text and data mining, requires express permission by NCB unless otherwise prescribed by law.
Background
The advancement of AI, including generative AI, is heavily reliant on substantial volumes of data and the processing thereof. These datasets allow the AI-system to identify, learn, and analyze intricate patterns and more. To manage the “learning/training” of an AI in an efficient manner, access to extensive and varied datasets is required, such as the copyright-protected works that NCB administers on behalf of its Rightsholders.
NCB emphasizes that the EU legislation, in NCB’s view, do not provide access to text and data mining for the purpose of developing generative AI-systems (which stores, processes, distributes or otherwise uses copyright-protected works). However, NCB is aware that this interpretation of the legal framework is not shared by everyone, especially by international tech companies and other actors responsible for the development and training of AI-systems/-tools, language models or the like. Regardless of which interpretation is made, the relevant rights are explicitly reserved by NCB as stated above.
Contact us
NCB/DENMARK
Lautrupsgade 9
2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
Tel: (+45) 33 36 87 00
Email:
Audio: audio.dk@ncb.dk
Audio-visual: av.dk@ncb.dk
NCB/FINLAND
Port of Music
Keilasatama 2 A
FI-02150 Espoo
Finland
Tel: (+358) 09-681 01256
Email:
Audio: audio.fi@ncb.dk
Audio-visual: av.fi@ncb.dk
NCB/ICELAND
Lautrupsgade 9
2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
Tel: (+354) 800 4359
Email:
Audio: audio.is@ncb.dk
Audio-visual: av.is@ncb.dk
Please note that all communication will be in English.
NCB/NORWAY
Lautrupsgade 9
2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
Tel: (+47) 80 05 66 27
Email:
Audio: audio.no@ncb.dk
Audio-visual: av.no@ncb.dk
NCB/SWEDEN
Lautrupsgade 9
2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
Tel: (+46) 010 – 499 99 95
Email:
Audio: audio.se@ncb.dk
Audio-visual: av.se@ncb.dk
Any inquiries/complaints to the received NCB distribution statements, should be forwarded to the following email address: member@ncb.dk
We kindly ask all other rights holders to forward their inquiries/complaints regarding the NCB distribution statements to the member services within their local performing rights societies.
See list of undistributed royalties due to lack of work documentation
| Department | Opening hours | |
| NCB Audio Denmark, Iceland, Norway & Sweden |
Monday-Thursday Friday |
10:00 to 14:00 (CET) Closed |
| NCB AV Denmark, Iceland, Norway & Sweden |
Monday-Friday | 10:00 to 14:00 (CET) |
| NCB Finland | Monday-Friday | 11:00 to 14:00 (Finnish time) |
| NCB Iceland | Monday-Friday | 09:00 to 13:00 (Icelandic time) |
| Email us | |
| Music recorders/mechanical rights: | |
| – Denmark | audio.dk@ncb.dk |
| – Finland | audio.fi@ncb.dk |
| – Iceland | audio.is@ncb.dk |
| – Norway | audio.no@ncb.dk |
| – Sweden | audio.se@ncb.dk |
| Music users/synchronization rights: | |
| – Denmark | av.dk@ncb.dk |
| – Finland | av.fi@ncb.dk |
| – Iceland | av.is@ncb.dk |
| – Norway | av.no@ncb.dk |
| – Sweden | av.se@ncb.dk |
| Member services: | member@ncb.dk |