We know Finnish music, its authors and users, and we develop our services to meet their needs.

Our services make it possible for music authors to focus on their work. When it comes to music rights, we provide extensive sales channels and contracts with the industry’s largest operators. We efficiently collect royalties from the markets and distribute them to music authors and publishers.

Our services cover the entire world: Teosto has reciprocal representation agreements with more than 80 foreign copyright organisations, through which we collect royalties from more than a hundred countries. We provide extensive amounts of data on the use of music as well as advice and guidance on how to administer financial rights.

For music users, we provide a wide repertoire of famous and moving works of music that create additional value for their operations. We grant licences for the public performance of music easily and reliably. Teosto helps companies that use music ensure that the authors receive the remuneration they deserve for their work and contribute to promoting the vitality of the Finnish music industry.

During the year, we also launched, together with Gramex, a new AV Music service, which aims to make it easier to use music in AV productions. The new service is provided under Teosto’s and Gramex’s joint venture GT Music Licences Ltd.

The goal of our promotion of interests activities is to promote the interests of composers, lyricists, arrangers and music publishers in matters related to copyright and the music industry’s operating environment.

We actively monitor the music industry’s operating environment, take part in public debate and promote our rightholders’ interests in both national and international arenas. We secure the music industry’s working conditions and provide high-quality information to decision-makers to support their decision-making. In Finland, we hold events and meetings where we make our rightholders’ voice heard to decision-makers. We also take part in broader political events and campaigns.

In 2023, a key activity in Teosto’s promotion of interests and advocacy work was to influence the national implementation of the Copyright Directive (DSM). The amendments to the Finnish Copyright Act required by the Directive were enacted at the beginning of 2023.

We promote our members’ interests together with our member organisations – the Society of Finnish Composers, the Finnish Music Creators’ Association and the Finnish Music Publishers Association. Together with them, we constitute the creative primary production sector of music, which drafted joint government programme goals for the spring 2023 parliamentary elections. The focus of the cooperation was on influencing the parliamentary elections and the government programme and contacting the newly elected MPs and ministers of the Finnish Parliament after the start of the parliamentary term.  As a result of active advocacy work, several issues important for the creative primary production of music were also included in the government programme. Towards the end of the year, the four organisations decided to create a more established foundation for their cooperation and hire a joint Advocacy Manager.

In addition, we participate in the advocacy efforts of Luovat ry in Finland. During the year, there were stakeholder meetings, the CDay campaign about the importance of copyright and an interview with the new Minister of Culture at the Music X Media event.

We communicated the importance of the music industry in society through Musiikkiala.fi, a joint website for the entire industry, funded by Teosto and Gramex. Teosto also worked with other music industry organisations in arranging the Flow Talks panel discussion.

Our international cooperation network includes CISAC, the global umbrella organisation for copyright societies, and the European GESAC. We attended their influencer meetings in Brussels and Mexico City, for example.

Our operations are guided by Teosto’s statutes and the decisions made by our General Meeting. In 2023, we also published the Code of Conduct, which sets out our core principles that guide our operations and are based on our values and legislation. In addition, Teosto is committed to the entire cultural sector’s ethical guidelines.

We are a member of the industry’s global umbrella organisation CISAC, and we are committed to complying with its rules and resolutions (Professional Rules for Musical Societies and Binding Resolutions for Musical Societies).

Matters related to data protection and information security are also a key part of our reliability. In all of our operations, we strive to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. Our data protection and information security operations support our business and reputation and meet the security requirements set out by the law, our members and customers as well as other partners. In our processing of personal data, we comply with the General Data Protection Regulation as well as other applicable data protection legislation. We have described how we process personal data in Teosto’s Privacy Policy. We have recorded the key information security principles in Teosto’s information security policy and its supplementary instructions, in which we have also trained all our staff. The principles of data processing have been recorded in Teosto’s Privacy Policy.

Teosto is a non-profit organisation, where the ultimate decision-making power is exercised by voting members. At the biannual General Meeting, our voting members decide on operating guidelines and elect the Board of Directors. Teosto has about 900 voting members. Our organisation also has institutional members, including the Society of Finnish Composers, the Finnish Music Creators’ Association, the Finnish Music Publishers Association and the Union of Finnish Writers. Each voting member has one vote at the General Meeting.

Teosto’s Board of Directors’ duty is to represent the organisation, direct the organisation’s general activity in promoting creative music, manage the organisation’s assets and take responsibility for the organisation’s finances, appoint and dismiss the organisation’s CEO and oversee the work of the organisation’s office. The Board of Directors consists of a Chairman and five other Members.

The duties and mandate of Teosto’s CEO are also determined by the Board of Directors. The CEO is in charge of the organisation’s day-to-day management and the work of the organisation’s office in accordance with the instructions and regulations issued by the Board of Directors. The CEO is supported by a management team in the planning and management of operations. The duties of the General Meeting, the Board of Directors and the CEO are described in more detail in the Statutes of Teosto.

Teosto’s continuity management is coordinated by a risk management group, which consists of representatives of Teosto’s various business areas and support functions. The risk management group makes an assessment of the main risks and their development for the Board of Directors twice a year.

Our continuity management activities are based on our continuity management policy. Our efforts to ensure the continuity of operations apply to all of our processes and functions, with a focus on the continuity of our basic tasks. We maintain documented continuity plans for key activities, and we update these plans regularly. We regularly train in, practise and test activities required by the plans.

Teosto exists for its members and customers.  We bring together our two most important member and customer groups: music rightholders and customers who use music. We also have other stakeholders that we need for developing and making progress with our operations.  For this reason, we engage in continuous dialogue with our stakeholders. By acting responsibly, we seek to meet our stakeholders’ expectations.

In accordance with our strategy, we improve our services on the basis of customer insight. We regularly measure the ease of use of our services (Customer Effort Score, CES) for rightholders and music user customers and also survey our customer satisfaction annually both at the general level and with interviews targeted at different member and customer groups. We survey the opinions of the general public annually with a survey conducted by Taloustutkimus.

OUR MOST IMPORTANT STAKEHOLDERS

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 Rightholders: composers, lyricists, arrangers and music publishers.

• Taking care of matters openly, transparently and responsibly.
• Licensing rights efficiently and extensively.
• Efficient and reliable distribution of royalties.
• Services are easy to use, easy communication, good reachability.
• Understanding of and support for music publishers’ business.
• Clear and understandable communication.
• Active promotion of interests and advocacy.
• Championing the industry in public life.

We strive for close, systematic and goal-oriented customer work and seek to actively develop our customer service and service channels. We build well-functioning and easy-to-use web services and present information clearly. We promote interests effectively and improve the conditions for making music.

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Music user clients: radio and TV networks, event producers, online platforms and restaurants as well as other businesses and organisations

• Taking care of contract matters openly, transparently and responsibly.
• Lawfulness and even-handedness of licensing.
• Understanding and promoting customers’ business goals.
• Services are easy to use, easy communication, good reachability.
• A well-functioning and efficient process for buying rights.
• Clear and understandable communication.

We strive for close, systematic and goal-oriented customer work and seek to actively develop our customer service and service channels. We build well-functioning and easy-to-use web services and present information clearly. We continuously develop our licensing products and buying processes.

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Staff:

• Responsible HR management
• Good communication
• Equality, good work atmosphere and working conditions

We proactively manage well-being at work and systematically improve leadership and supervisory work. We encourage our employees to develop their skills.

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Political decision-makers: Members of Parliament, Ministers, the European Parliament and Commission

• Good cooperation and open access to information and communication that makes preparing decisions easier.
• A common goal of making decisions and reforms that benefit society as a whole.

We regularly communicate and hold meetings in connection with, for example, various task forces and events. We offer clear and understandable information. Our cultural ambassador activities bring decision-makers and rightholders together. We take part in the advocacy efforts of European and international umbrella organisations (GESAC & CISAC).

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Authorities: competition regulators, ministries, the Finnish Patent and Registration Office

• Complying with laws and regulations in Teosto’s operations.
• Lobbying and offering expert help with matters related to the industry.

We offer information and help openly and communicate well with the authorities. We respond to enquiries quickly. We participate in law drafting by giving statements and taking part in ministries’ working groups and committees.

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General public: citizens, media

• Open and active dialogue.
• The responsibility and reliability of business operations.
• Sharing Teosto’s expertise through various communication channels.
• Minimising misuse and negative impacts.

We communicate openly and actively through various channels and are willing to engage in dialogue. We react quickly and actively to questions, for example on social media.

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Copyright organisations: Finnish and foreign collective management organisations, music and cultural industry organisations, cooperation forums for the copyright sector, the international umbrella organisations GESAC and CISAC

• Good and open cooperation.
• Sharing Teosto’s expertise.
• A common goal of ensuring the functioning and sustainability of the copyright system and collective management.

We actively take part in collaboration and various projects, work towards goals and events. We make our voices heard in various organisations’ Boards of Directors and decision-making bodies.