The Swiss Cooperative Society for Music Authors and Publishers (; ; ) or Swiss Society for the Rights of Authors of Musical Works (; ; ), commonly known as SUISA (from , "Switzerland Authors"), is the

collecting society A copyright collective (also known as a copyright society, copyright collecting agency, licensing agency or copyright collecting society or collective management organization) is a non-governmental body created by copyright law or private agreeme ...

for

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

s and

music publisher A music publisher is a type of publisher that specializes in distributing music. Music publishers originally published sheet music. When copyright became legally protected, music publishers began to play a role in the management of the intellectu ...

s. It undertakes

collective rights management Collective rights management is the licensing of copyright and related rights by organisations acting on behalf of rights owners. Collective management organisations (CMOs), sometimes also referred to as collecting societies, typically represen ...

for its members in order to collect license fees when their musical works are performed in public, broadcast or transmitted, and to pay out performing royalties. It was formed in 1923. It is also the administrative body for the

CAE number In musical rights management, the CAE number was previously used to identify rights holders. The acronym "CAE" was devised by the national society of Switzerland, SUISA, and consisted of the French words Compositeur, Auteur and , for Composer, Aut ...

External links

* Music organisations based in Switzerland Music licensing organizations {{music-org-stub