FAQs

Sign up

Cat 3

ECCO is known as a Collective Management Organization ‘CMO’ because its primary role is to administer certain intellectual property rights on behalf of its members in the Eastern Caribbean and through reciprocal agreements, of creators throughout the world. ECCO collects fees by issuing licences to music users granting them permission and authority to the restrictive acts as defined in the various Copyright Acts of the region, including; public performances, broadcasting, communication to the public, reproduction etc. In order to make royalty payments to its members, ECCO needs to know what music is being used. ECCO use a digital monitoring system to monitor what certain audio and audio-visual stations play with some radio stations also providing ECCO with detailed reports of the music they play. For many major live events such as; St. Lucia Jazz, Dominica World Creole Music festival, Carnivals and other festivals across the regions, ECCO sends its agents to obtain information first hand on the songs performed. Due to the huge number of public performances that take place every year in bars, nightclubs hotels etc. it is impossible to track every performance that occurs therefore ECCO distributes General Licence revenue against the data supplied by the radio stations and a sample of small live events.ECCO also collects royalties from around the world for its members through reciprocal agreements with other CMO’s overseas.ECCO is a non-profit making organisation. Having recovered its running costs it pays the remaining money collected to the members identified on logs supplied by the radio stations and data collected from major events.

It would be impossible for individual composers, authors or publishers of music to monitor the use of their works, issue licences and collect royalties from broadcast and from public performances of their music across the Eastern Caribbean and the rest of the world. Therefore, the basic role of ECCO is to: (a) grant licences to music users (radio and television stations, restaurants, bars, hotels, DJ's, etc.) for the public performance of music in the Eastern Caribbean; (b) collect licence fees and (c) distribute royalties to its members and foreign copyright owners whose works ECCO also control through reciprocal agreements.ECCO administers the ‘performing right’ in musical works through an assignment of these rights by the original owners (its members who are also the creators). There are three components in the administration of these rights by ECCO: the Creator, the User and ECCO. The CREATOR holds the original rights in his creation and is entitled to be compensated for the use of his creation. The USER of the creator's property needs the permission of the creator for each use. This is where ECCO comes in. The CREATOR assigns certain rights to ECCO to administer and ECCO in turn grants a licence to the USER (usually a blanket licence) for use of ECCO’s repertoire. The licence fees paid by the USER are collected and distributed back to the CREATOR by ECCO in the form of royalties.

ECCO policy and management are determined by a Board of Directors, elected by the general membership, which comprises of: - 6 writers & 2 publishers from St. Lucia, one Director elected from the Steering Committees in Antigua, Dominica, Grenada & St. Vincent & the Grenadines. The current Board of Directors has a mandate to transform the organization to a position of one Director per member state. The Board delegates the day-to-day running of ECCO to a General Manager and other employees.