Collecting societies help page

Collecting societies (also known as Collective Management Organisations or CMOs) are generally not-for-profit. They help visual artists and creators claim royalty payments for secondary uses more effectively. Secondary uses are when a third party uses an image by copying the original publication, for example when a student in a library wants to photocopy pages from a book that features your work, or a business uses a copied image for internal reference or research.

As the creator of the work being photocopied, you’re entitled to a royalty but rather than ask the student to contact you every time they photocopy your work, the library pays an annual license fee that covers these types of uses, which are distributed to the relevant collecting societies. The collecting societies are each funded by their respective countries copyright licensing corporations or other societies.

As your representative, Alamy can claim for your eligible licences. When you sign up to Alamy you  grant us the right to claim on your behalf and we pay you 50% commission of the funds awarded. This can vary each year, and fund allocation is at the full discretion of the Collecting Society. Generally, how much you’re awarded also depends on how often your work has been published in a book, magazine or television programme which is worked out by the Collecting Society.

We work with four collecting societies – DACS and Picsel in the UK, ASCRL in the USA, and Copyright Agency Ltd in Australia.

In 2024 we helped 41,000 Alamy contributors successfully claim their share of the £5.5 million pot.

DACS Payback is an annual scheme that distributes money to visual artists to cover secondary usages for certain licenses you sell into the UK market. Those licenses are books, magazines and TV. If you’d like more info on The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) and their Payback Scheme then you might want to check out the DACS FAQs.

With DACS, to be eligible you need to have sold one or more licenses for use in a UK magazine or book. You can also claim for images licensed to appear in domestic TV programmes broadcast in the UK.

You don’t need to do anything. Unless you opted out for DACS Payback by the 30^th July 2016 (see contributor contract clause 22.6) then we’ll automatically claim for all eligible licences on your behalf.

How much you’ll receive will depend on how often your work has been published in a book or magazine or used in TV programmes. DACS work out your share by the number of times your work has been featured, not by the number of times it has been photocopied or watched. The amount DACS receive in licensing revenue can vary from year to year. The number of applicants each year also has an effect on how much you’ll receive.

We can never guarantee any minimum claim, but the more eligible licenses you have the more money you should get.

Once we receive funds from DACS or a Collecting Society we aim to allocate your share in time for the following monthly payment run (and pay you then if your cleared balance is over $50). You will see this on your sales report when it happens.

This clause confirms we can claim a share of royalties for secondary uses of your images from collecting societies such as DACS. We will pay you a 50% share of these royalties after recouping our administration charges of around £1 per claim.