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Making available music and videos on the internet

Apply for a licence

Apply here for a licence to make videos with music available on the internet.

Online form

For videos with music published on the internet, a distinction must be made between two categories of rights: the right to produce the video and the right to make the video available.

When music is used on videos in the internet (e.g. for image videos), the authors are entitled to the following remuneration:

  • For the production of the video: 
    The rights for the use of music in online videos have to be verified for each video individually. You may already have acquired the necessary rights (e.g. in the case of commissioned music) or you may not have produced the video yourself but obtained it from your foreign business partner, for example. However, if the videos were produced in Switzerland without the production rights having been licensed, they must be registered with SUISA. For further information on this subject, see “company films” and tariff information: Tariff VN.
  • For the making-available of the video:
    This fee is calculated based on the production budget (higher or lower than the CHF 30,000 threshold) and the number of videos with music which you make available on your own websites and social media pages.  The licence fee can be settled either as a monthly or an annual flat fee. To enable us to calculate the fee, we need you to report the number of videos made available across all your websites, the relevant production budget, and the date you counted your videos (counting reference date). The licence fees are indicated in the Licence Terms and Conditions

How to proceed:

Please send us the duly completed questionnaire. We will then issue the licence and invoice. Once your payment is received, we distribute the remuneration to the beneficiary composers, lyricists, and publishers.

Please take into consideration any other relevant rights

FAQ: Frequently asked questions

  • The fee is based on the number of videos with music made available and the production budget. (PDF MoW Licensing Terms and Conditions)

  • Since you make music in videos publicly available on the internet, the authors have a legal right to remuneration. This is collected by SUISA and passed on to the authors.

  • Yes. SUISA is responsible for managing the making-available rights for videos intended for the public in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. As a rule, these rights cannot be acquired abroad. If your partner abroad exclusively uses copyright- and royalty-free music (which must be legally ascertained in each individual case), no fee is payable. However, many providers claim to offer music that is purportedly copyright and royalty-free and which, contrary to their own assurances, is not actually copyright or royalty free. For this reason, it is worthwhile verifying that only copyright and royalty-free music is actually offered.

  • If you only know the total number of videos (regardless of whether or not they contain music), you can tell us this total number. Based on experience, we assume 75% of all videos contain music and we will accordingly reduce the total number of your videos by 25%.

  • You report to us the average number of videos made available per year on the reference date of your choice. Based on your report, you will then receive an invoice for the current year. If, in the following year, the number of videos changes and moves into a different fee bracket, you should let us know by 28 February. (PDF MoW Licensing Terms and Conditions) Adjustments can be made once a year. Please report the change using the application form or via email.

  • From the following year onwards, no fee is owed.

  • If the authors are not members of a collecting society such as SUISA (or Germany’s GEMA, for example), you do not have to pay anything. Otherwise, you will have to pay a fee for making the music available. If the authors are members of a copyright  management organisation, you can only settle the synchronisation rights, and in certain cases the production and reproduction rights, directly.

  • We take the average value of the production costs of all the videos (the production budget of all the videos divided by the number of videos).

  • Yes. Videos that are only made available on an intranet are subject to the same licensing obligation as those made available on a website or on social media.

  • You make 100 videos available for each website (i.e. on your YouTube and Facebook channels as well as on your own website), making a total of 300. This is the number that has to be declared.

  • No. The licence only covers the author’s remuneration for making the music you use available on the internet. The synchronisation and reproduction rights must be acquired for each video in advance. If you copy the music from existing sources (e.g. a sound recording or directly from the Internet), then you also have to obtain the rights in the recording (neighbouring rights).

  • SUISA grants you the mechanical reproduction rights. To acquire the synchronisation right, you must contact the respective rightholders (composers, lyricists, publishers) directly (Publishers@suisa.ch). For the neighbouring rights, you should contact either the producer of the sound recording (the “label”), the IFPI (info@ifpi.ch) or Audion (info@audion-music.ch). We recommend that you use our Production Music Catalogue. This music includes all rights and saves you the effort of acquiring them individually.