The SUISA Group realised consolidated operating income of CHF 232 million, an increase of 5.5% year-on-year. Of this amount, SUISA’s core domestic business, namely the licensing of copyright uses in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, accounted for CHF 161 million (+5.8%). Another CHF 13 million (+2.1%) were generated by uses abroad of SUISA’s repertoire. Revenues from the global licensing of the Audio on Demand (AoD) repertoire represented by SUISA amounted to CHF 42 million (down 7.6% against the prior year), CHF 13 million of which from the use of works by rightsholders represented by the SUISA Cooperative. Overall, the SUISA Group thus realised consolidated licensing income of CHF 216 million, an increase of 2.7% compared with 2024. Secondary income totaled CHF 16 million, up 67.1% year-on-year primarily as a result of the release of credit risk reserves.
Performance rights, the main drivers of SUISA’s core business income, accounted for 30% of total copyright licence revenues, overtaking broadcasting rights (28%) for the first time. The AoD sector including global collection ranked next at 19%.
Lower costs
Thanks to effective automation measures and despite the rising workload, operating expenses excluding book losses on the securities portfolio (CHF 38 million) continued to decline (down 7% year-on-year). This reduces our expenses-to-revenue ratio to 16.4% (prior year: 18.2%). This favourable ratio is notably due to the release of valuation adjustments relating to investments made since 2017 in the Mint joint venture.
Thanks to this performance, the amount distributable to entitled parties in Switzerland and abroad increased again, reaching a record CHF 192 million (2.4% growth year-on-year).
Decision on SRG SSR funding – more music in broadcasting programmes
In the reporting year, we were preoccupied with the referendum on halving the SRG SSR household fee and exempting businesses from the fee. Following a challenging referendum campaign for cultural creators, the Swiss electorate clearly rejected any further erosion of the financial foundations of the Service Public with a “No” vote of 62%. Nevertheless, public funding for SRG SSR is set to decline in coming years. This is already provided for in the Federal Council’s amendment to the Radio and Television Ordinance. It will be all the more important, therefore, to talk more about Service Public broadcasting content and less about money in coming months. The Federal Council has to renew the SRG SSR licence. Cultural workers need to ensure that cultural promotion – including of Swiss music – occupies a prominent position in SRG SSR programming.
AI in music and at SUISA
The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is challenging, not only for society as a whole, but for our work as a rights management organisation. Our routine licensing and distribution tasks can be increasingly automated with the help of AI, thereby streamlining and improving processes and positively impacting costs as a result. However, AI is also increasingly being used to generate music. For this purpose, existing protected musical works are being used to train AI models. The result is new musical output. Experts worldwide are debating how to deal with these issues, courts are handing down rulings, and legislators are grappling with rules and regulations. The creative industry is concerned that musical works created by authors will suffer unfair competition from purely AI-generated music. Tech companies, on the other hand, are eager to gain the easiest possible, preferably licence-free, access to musical works. SUISA is actively engaging with these issues and will seek to ensure that the legitimate interests of authors, publishers and other rightsholders are taken into account and fairly remunerated under any prospective rules and regulations.
Changing of the guard at the Executive Committee
During the reporting year, SUISA’s Board focused on the process of replacing the incumbent Executive Committee, whose three members will be retiring one after the other at the end of 2026 (Irène Philipp), in mid-2027 (Andreas Wegelin), and in spring 2028 (Vincent Salvadé). The first decisions have already been taken with the appointment of Claudia Kempf and Toni Falzetta as head of the Member Services and Customer Services divisions respectively. A new organisation chart will come into force when they take up office on 1 January 2027. The search for a successor to Andreas Wegelin will be one of the key tasks before the Board in 2026 with a view to setting the right course for SUISA’s future.
Performance rights overtake broadcasting rights for the first time
SUISA’s results improved again in the 2025 financial year. The consolidated operating revenue of the SUISA companies rose by 5.5% to CHF 231.7 million compared with the prior year. With revenues up 6.8% to CHF 64.5 million, performance rights were a key driver in the excellent performance. As a result, they overtook broadcasting rights, which were virtually stable at CHF 60.8 million (2024: CHF 60.4 million), for the first time.
Remuneration claims were also on a positive trend, increasing 10.6% to CHF 16.4 million. Online rights produced mixed results: while video-on-demand revenues in Switzerland and Liechtenstein were up 20.5% to CHF 15.8 million, global rights management revenues for online music uses declined by 7.6% to CHF 41.6 million. Revenue from reproduction rights increased 10.5% to CHF 3.7 million. Despite this increase, the long-term downward trend in physical sound recordings is persisting in the wake of ongoing digitalisation. Foreign revenue increased slightly, by 2.1% to CHF 12.8 million.
