An organization that controls the economic rights to a large number of creative works.
Also known as “collecting society” or a "copyright collective.”
A collective rights management organization or society most often deals with the rights to music and text. These groups lower the transaction costs of acquiring rights, and make it easy for would-be users of copyrighted works to get permission to do so. With a collective rights group, there need only be one set of negotiations and one fee paid, regardless of how many different works are used. Compare having to find and negotiate with the rights-holders for one hundred different songs with negotiating a single contract.
While groups like this undoubtedly solve a market problem, criticisms leveled against them include that they do not channel enough of the fees they receive to the actual artists, and that they seek to unfairly charge for uses over which they should not have control. Also, most notably, there are no collective rights groups managing the rights to sound recordings, which has led to much controversy over sampling.
Some collective rights management organizations include: