Composers, Authors and Publishers Association (CAPASSO)

CAPASSO is a mechanical rights licensing agency, which collects and distributes royalties to its members: music publishers and composers. CAPASSO licenses the reproduction or reformatting of musical works. This is because a mechanical right (which forms part of copyright) is raised whenever a reproduction (copy) or format transfer takes place. CAPASSO is authorised, by way of a mandate from its members, toissue such mechanical rights licences, collect the licence fees and distribute them as royalties back to the members.

CAPASSO was incorporated in 2014 as a non-profit company representing the mechanical rights of music composers, authors and publishers. The organisation came about as a result of the coming together of SAMRO and NORM, with the vision to create a progressive mechanical rights licensing hub, which would represent all rightsholders and would play an integral role in the copyright licensing landscape on the African continent.