On April 7, 2026, as SACEM (The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music) celebrated its 175th anniversary, CEO Cécile Rap-Veber recounted the origins of the organization: “It was born out of a lawsuit whose legitimacy was undeniable. Imagine creators sitting in a café, realizing their music is being played there. When they tell the owner they’ll pay for their drinks once he pays for their music, he refuses. That lawsuit became our founding act.”
Rap-Veber’s own career began in law before evolving into a long-term commitment to the music industry — first at Universal Music, then within one of the world’s leading collective rights organizations, where she has steadily climbed the ranks since joining in 2013.
In 2025, SACEM distributed €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) to 663,000 songwriters, composers, authors and publishers. The organization’s primary growth driver was international digital collections, which rose 13% year-over-year, from €749 million ($880 million) to €845 million ($992 million), while collections in France remained stable at €859 million.
In an exclusive interview with Billboard France, Rap-Veber looks back on SACEM’s 2025 performance and discusses the organization’s future growth prospects.
“I’ve Always Been Surrounded by Culture”
What was your first relationship with music?
I think my parents influenced me deeply. My father was a fashion designer and used to create cassette tapes for his runway shows. Through him, I discovered American pop, disco and French variété. Every weekend, we listened to opera at home.
I belong to the generation of pirate radio stations — I had my little Sony Cube clock radio when NRJ first launched. I also grew up with Michael Jackson, Human League, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Indochine, and French artists like Étienne Daho and France Gall. I listened to music constantly.
Did you grow up around artists?
I come from a family of creators, though not specifically musicians.
One of my ancestors, José-Maria de Heredia, founded the Parnassian poetry movement. My uncle is Francis Veber, director of The Dinner Game and La Chèvre. My sister writes books, my mother was a journalist and theater director, and my father was a fashion designer. He recently told me — at 84 years old — that he had written a 350-page book. Even he has turned to writing now.
I never thought I had their talent, so I chose intellectual property law in order to protect creators instead.
So your early legal career was already closely tied to artistic creation?
Very quickly, I was drawn to law — business law and intellectual property law specifically. I loved the idea of defending culture. In 1995, after passing the bar exam, I joined a law firm specializing in the field.
About 75% of our clients came from the music business. We represented EMI and Virgin, as well as artists like Zazie and Matthieu Chedid. The remaining 25% came from film and television production.
In reality, I have always worked within culture.
From Universal to SACEM
What changed between your work as a lawyer and your role at Universal?
As a lawyer, my career had two dimensions. One was contractual — negotiating artists’ rights when they signed to labels. The other was litigation, where I argued cases involving copyright infringement or privacy violations. I even handled criminal cases for certain rappers. I loved being in court.
At Universal, I represented the label’s interests, but I was always focused on maintaining balance between the artist and the company. At the time, record deals often covered three or four albums, and I believed those relationships needed to be balanced from the beginning to last over time.
I arrived during an extraordinary period, just before the collapse of the physical music market, when Universal was diversifying aggressively. I helped develop projects like Popstars and Star Academy. I became involved in far more strategic initiatives than I had as an attorney.
Leading One of the World’s Largest Collective Rights Organizations
You joined SACEM in 2013 before becoming CEO in 2021. What was your initial role?
When I arrived in 2013, my responsibilities covered licensing: media, CDs, private copying and the early days of digital. Because digital is inherently global, I quickly found myself managing many international matters.
Handling digital rights means processing enormous volumes of data. To support that, we built a data-processing platform called URights. Later, when a colleague retired, my predecessor also entrusted me with international operations.
What was SACEM’s image when you arrived?
SACEM already had the reputation of being a major global leader. Sister societies around the world always respected it, largely because of the strength of French copyright law, which is built on an exceptionally protective legislative framework.
But like all collective management organizations, SACEM faced accusations of opacity. That was something I wanted to change.
Coming from Universal and from law, I honestly didn’t really know what SACEM was before joining. Once inside, I discovered 1,300 employees entirely devoted to defending authors’ rights, creators and publishers. But perhaps they didn’t communicate enough about what they were doing.
We worked extensively on transparency. Today, our members know exactly what has been collected, distributed, and whether their catalogs are properly registered.
At the same time, we reduced management costs by nearly 40% over the past five years. I hope people are proud of their copyright society.
How did you lower costs while increasing membership?
Every year since the post-COVID recovery, SACEM has doubled its number of new members. We went from around 7,000 new members annually to nearly 15,000 over the past five years.
At first, these new members don’t immediately generate royalties. But after a few years, they begin creating and releasing works. We now collect royalties both for these emerging careers and for our digital partners.
To reduce costs, we first pooled our IT infrastructure with more creators worldwide. Then we migrated our processing tools to the cloud, which made us significantly more efficient.
Today, we collect more royalties than ever thanks to streaming growth, for more creators thanks to our partnerships, and with more agile tools.
International Growth and the Streaming Economy
International business is driving much of Sacem’s growth. Why?
Absolutely. Originally, SACEM was built around the French market and traditional exploitation channels like concerts and media. But those sectors have remained stable in recent years because traditional media has suffered from declining advertising revenues.
Meanwhile, we’ve tried to stabilize — or even reduce — costs for partners such as retailers and municipalities, which are themselves struggling with inflation.
Today, the real growth is coming from international digital business. Our members are now exporting globally; for some of them, international streams represent 50% to 60% of their revenues. That’s enormous.
We’ve seen it with L’Impératrice and Gojira, not to mention DJ Snake or David Guetta. The number of French creators with global reach keeps growing.
How do you track royalties from live performances abroad?
Live operates on a declaration system. We ask creators, publishers or managers to submit their setlists through our portal. At the same time, promoters submit their own declarations. We then cross-reference those two streams of information.
For international performances, we work with sister societies to ensure collection. It’s worth noting that in France, we can collect royalties regardless of venue size, whereas in the U.S., legal restrictions prevent ASCAP from collecting everywhere.
Does working with so many foreign collecting societies weaken SACEM’s leadership position?
ASCAP, the main U.S. society, has 1.5 million members, but SACEM collects more royalties overall. ASCAP collects for everyone in the United States, including SACEM members, through reciprocal agreements.
What can be confusing to outside observers is distinguishing the share we retain for our own members from the share we redistribute to foreign sister societies.
You’ve signed agreements with African collecting societies. Is this a major growth area for francophone music?
It’s one of my greatest ambitions. For ten years, we’ve worked to help African creators earn a living from their music. It’s complex because digital rights management requires heavy technological investment.
We signed agreements with Burida in Ivory Coast and Sodav in Senegal to manage their global digital rights. We’re doing the same for Arabic-language creators, particularly in Lebanon.
Today, those repertoires generate several million euros in digital royalties, and their international reach continues to expand. It’s an incredible momentum.
Streaming, AI and the Future of Rights
In the early 2010s, Sacem negotiated major deals with streaming platforms. How was royalty allocation determined?
The foundation was laid with the launch of Apple’s iTunes. iTunes valued authors’ rights at 8% of the download price, based on 9% of the wholesale CD price.
That was unfair because digital eliminated manufacturing and logistics costs for labels. Authors’ rights should have represented a larger share. But once a global standard is established, it becomes very difficult to reverse.
At the start of streaming, deals were also around 8%, but over time we managed to double that figure to roughly 16% today.
Master rights still receive the lion’s share, though that could change with AI. Training models rely first and foremost on the underlying composition, not necessarily on the original recording. That gives us leverage to capture more value for creators.
Has digital improved transparency, or only increased complexity?
Both.
Digital allows creators from any country to reach a global audience through streaming platforms. We’ve signed agreements with YouTube, Meta and TikTok that provide us with precise usage data, enabling more accurate royalty distribution.
At the same time, the volume of content has become overwhelming, especially with the explosion of generative AI. Standing out in that sea of content is increasingly difficult.
Digital is therefore an opportunity, but also carries the risk of dilution, with lower value per track than during the CD era.
France still lags behind other markets in paid streaming penetration. Does that concern you?
It has concerned us for years. Paid streaming penetration in France remains around 25%, versus 50% in the United States.
France is a country deeply attached to free access to culture. That’s wonderful for audiences, but it slows conversion to paid services.
Why is free streaming growing faster than paid streaming in France?
The free offering has become so good that users don’t always feel the need to pay. It’s an acquisition funnel that doesn’t convert enough.
If people become convinced that culture should be free, it becomes very difficult to monetize it later. Yet financing creation means paying artists — and everyone working behind the scenes.
There probably need to be more restrictions on free tiers to encourage subscriptions.
That said, we are in 2026, in the middle of a global economic crisis and inflationary pressure. It’s understandable that for many people, heating, housing and food come before paying for music.
“AI Must Develop With Creators, Not Against Them”
What form are your negotiations with AI companies taking?
Everything still needs to be built. The first deals with AI firms will be experimental. The primary objective is to compensate creators for the training of models on their works.
Several questions remain unresolved: should generated content stay within the applications? Who should pay — the AI company or the professional user?
SACEM has always found ways to reach agreements with technology companies, and that is still what drives us today.
Are you negotiating alongside master rights holders?
Yes, I’m discussing with some of them whether we would be stronger together. But I will not sign any agreement without creators’ approval.
Some companies believe they can negotiate directly, but I believe authors did not necessarily anticipate AI-related uses when they joined SACEM.
Certain AI companies even claim they only need the composition and not the master recording. For now, discussions remain limited because many AI firms simply refuse to engage.
They refuse to answer you?
Completely. They admit they trained on publicly available material, but they confuse “available” with “free of rights.”
When we ask for transparency, they don’t respond. That’s why we are pushing for legislation that would reverse the burden of proof.
Can a fully AI-generated work currently be registered with SACEM?
It depends on the degree of human creation involved.
Björn Ulvaeus — ABBA co-founder and CISAC president — explains that he uses Suno as an additional studio tool while still composing songs himself on guitar. In that case, the work remains original and copyright-protected.
But simply prompting an AI to create “Mozart-style music with Ferré-style lyrics” is not enough to qualify for copyright protection. We published guidelines on our website explaining those conditions.
Do you still see commercial opportunities in AI?
Every technological innovation is an opportunity. Jean-Michel Jarre and Pedro Winter have used technology for years to push creativity further.
If copyright is respected, then I say absolutely yes. We need to create a virtuous relationship in which technology develops alongside creators, not against them.
“Culture Is a Sovereignty Issue”
Do you believe music — and culture more broadly — remains undervalued economically?
Completely.
People don’t realize that culture is an ecosystem generating €100 billion ($117 billion) in revenue. We’re talking about one million jobs and €50 billion ($58 billion) in added value.
In fact, culture generates more value in France than the automotive industry.
Beyond economics, culture is a sovereignty issue for our country. French cinema, music and visual arts are exported worldwide. This cultural exception — envied around the globe — is part of our strength and sovereignty.
We’ve always been proud of our gastronomy and luxury industries. We should be equally proud of our theater, cinema, television, press and music — which makes the entire world dance.
We should invest more to export it better.
Should France adopt a stronger artist development model, similar to the U.K. or South Korea?
What I find important about the CNM is that recorded music, creation and live performance are finally united under one roof.
I’m convinced these three sectors together can create global export champions.
I’m not sure artists necessarily need to be identified earlier, because you can’t always immediately recognize a project’s potential. But as soon as an artist begins touring, publishing and master-rights teams should work quickly to maximize the impact of that tour.
That requires close collaboration — and financial resources. Which is why funding for the CNM is such a critical issue for supporting emerging talent, diversity and exports.
One final issue generated significant controversy: copyright collection at funerals. What actually happened?
The media coverage was sensationalist.
We never contacted families directly. We simply clarified an existing agreement with funeral companies regarding music played during ceremonies — something they had already been billing families for.
For years, those companies reserved a few euros for music rights. Then some stopped paying while continuing to charge families.
A judge ultimately ruled that music should be compensated, just like flowers or electricity. To calm the situation, we agreed on a flat fee of roughly €1 ($1.7) per ceremony.
It’s symbolic.
