CISAC Marks 100 Years in Paris, Launches “Paris Commitment” on AI and Fair Creator Pay
The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) marked its centenary on June 4, 2026 with a General Assembly at the Pavillon Cambon in Paris (the city where it was founded in 1926), opened by a keynote from ABBA co-founder and CISAC President Björn Ulvaeus and used to launch the "Paris Commitment," a four-principle declaration on protecting human creativity in the age of AI (CISAC; Music Ally).
The Independent Music Brief | June 8, 2026
CISAC represents more than five million creators through 227 member societies in 111 countries and collects over €14 billion annually as royalties on behalf of affiliated creators and publishers. The centenary assembly, co-hosted by five French societies (SACEM, SACD, ADAGP, La SAIF, and LaScam), convened more than 300 participants across music, audiovisual, drama, literature, and visual arts.
The Paris Commitment sets out four principles: the protection of human creativity and cultural diversity; transparency, licensing, and fair remuneration in AI systems; the importance of collective management in sustaining creative ecosystems; and the duty of governments and policymakers to safeguard creators' rights and cultural expression.
The operational read for the indie sector is that CISAC's centenary is less a commemoration than a positioning exercise, and the position it stakes out matters disproportionately to independent creators. CISAC Director General Gadi Oron framed the milestone bluntly: "A hundred years after our founding, the challenges remain strikingly similar: ensuring that those who create are properly recognised and remunerated for their work. What has changed is the scale and speed of transformation, driven by digital platforms and artificial intelligence." For the independent songwriter and composer, that framing is not abstract. The collective-management system CISAC sits atop is the infrastructure through which the overwhelming majority of independent creators actually get paid, precisely because they lack the bilateral leverage to cut the kind of direct platform deals a major publisher can.
The Paris Commitment's significance is that it does not merely oppose AI; it specifies the terms on which AI should be permitted to use creative work and it names collective management as the mechanism through which those terms should be enforced. For a sector whose economics depend on aggregated, society-administered rights rather than individually negotiated ones, a declaration that elevates collective management to a first principle is a declaration that defends the indie creator's primary revenue infrastructure.
Collective Management Is the Pressure Point Where the Independent Songwriter Is Most Exposed
‘The importance of collective management in sustaining creative ecosystems’. This is the principle with the most direct bearing on independent income, because the independent songwriter and composer is the creator most dependent on the collective system and least able to substitute for it. A major publisher can license a catalog to an AI developer directly and capture the value bilaterally; an unaffiliated independent songwriter cannot and relies instead on their home society and the broader CISAC network to license collectively and distribute proportionally.
The most consequential read for the independent community is that CISAC is simultaneously building the technical infrastructure that would make collective AI licensing operable. The organization's 2026 Annual Report documents continued work on CIS-Net 2, a transformation of its global data infrastructure, and on strengthening the ISWC system for accurate identification of works and creators (Music Week). Accurate work-and-creator identification is the precondition for any system that pays creators when AI ingests or generates from their work, and independent songwriters will be greatly affected depending on the outcome of these systems.
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The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has reversed 2 Live Crew's October 2024 victory in their bid to reclaim their recordings catalog from Lil' Joe Records. (Music Business Worldwide; Complete Music Update). Termination rights are one of the most important catalog-recapture tools available to independent and heritage creators seeking to reclaim ownership decades after an original deal. The independent community should take the reversal as a reminder that the procedural mechanics of exercising termination are as consequential as the right itself across the 2026-2027 rights-recapture environment.
Sources: CISAC - CISAC marks 100 years with landmark General Assembly in Paris · Music Ally - CISAC launches Paris Commitment while Human Artistry Campaign takes to skies with Suno protest · Music Week - 'AI is moving faster than the rules that protect creators': CISAC unveils 2026 Annual Report · Complete Music Update - CISAC sets out objectives for protecting human creativity amid rapid advancements in AI · Music Week - IMPEL adds six new members including The Royalty Network, CTRL Music and First Original · Music Business Worldwide - 2 Live Crew can't take back their recorded music copyrights after all, appeals court rules · Complete Music Update - US court overturns 2 Live Crew's successful termination rights claim, but on a bankruptcy technicality