Report from the 2020 Annual General Meeting
Yet another record year for Stim, the members could establish at the Annual General Meeting. The number of songwriters, composers and music publishers continues to increase and in 2019 the number of members exceeded 92,000, which is more than ever in Stim’s nearly 100-year history.
Stim’s royalty payments to rightsholders over the year amounted to approximately SEK 1.8 billion, which is an increase of around SEK 200 million on the previous year. The largest proportion (38 per cent) of the year’s more than SEK 2.4 billion in revenue originated online, followed by TV (21 per cent) and radio (14 per cent).
Strong growth and copyright success
Record revenues and a 15 per cent growth show that Swedish-made music is still very strong internationally. The fact that costs have not increased at the same rate as revenues in 2019 and that it has been possible to make payment of previously reserved money in 2020 means that, despite the effects of the virus, Stim will be able to pay out more money to its members than ever before in 2020.
The decision on a new copyright directive in 2019 is also an important milestone for copyright and future opportunities for music creators to get paid for their work.
– It feels great that an increasing number of music creators give us the confidence to manage their financial rights. 2019 was an important year for our members as the new EU copyright directive was approved, while with this year’s record-high revenue we saw the positive effect of all our new agreements with digital music services, says Karsten Dyhrberg Nielsen, CEO of Stim.
As part of constantly developing our services, Stim made several investments during the year. The new Stim Music Room – which members can use to create new music and broaden their network of contacts – opened their doors and was basically fully booked every day in 2019.
Stim Music Room has also become a natural contact area between Stim’s organization and Stim members, where they have been able to ask questions and get support from the staff directly on site.
Increased transparency and traceability
In 2019, the intensive work on traceability and transparency that we have pursued for several years took effect. A strategic initiative which, in brief, is about making the money’s way through Stim visible. Within this context, the issue of a small proportion of old funds that could not be disbursed – referred to as unallocable funds – has now found a solution that benefits the entire Stim collective by adding them to Stim’s broad cultural activities, which aim at developing the entire music scene. New procedures have also been established to reduce the amount of unallocable money in the future.
Development of the democracy of association
Modernizing and developing democracy within the association was a clear theme during the Annual General Meeting, focusing, among other things, on the renewal of the board’s working methods and nomination processes.
To lay a foundation for greater dynamics in the board and open up for more nominations, it was decided to limit how long one can sit on the board without special justification, and also to extend the ability to nominate forward from January 1 to March 31. The Election Committee also made a clear appeal to the members to nominate more members to the Board, NäMMU and the Election Committee for the next Annual General Meeting.
The Meeting was also given an account of how the Board will work on a new code of conduct on how we all at Stim should relate to each other, in order to maintain a cooperation based on our common values.
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