The EU's "bestseller clause": your right to fair pay, yearly statements and a second negotiation

Most record and publishing deals are signed once and never looked at again. The EU's 2019 copyright directive changed that for anyone whose contract is governed by an EU country's law. Its Chapter 3, Articles 18 to 23 of Directive (EU) 2019/790, gives authors (songwriters, composers, lyricists) and performers (featured artists, session players, singers) a set of rights over the deals they have already signed. People call it the "bestseller clause" because of one part of it: the right to go back and ask for more when a track earns far more than your deal assumed. Countries had until 7 June 2021 to write it into national law.

Here is what each article does, how countries changed it, and how to actually use it.

The five rights, in plain English

Article 18: appropriate and proportionate pay. When you license or transfer your exclusive rights, you are entitled to appropriate and proportionate remuneration. Countries can choose how to deliver that. The ECSA report notes that the directive still allows lump sums, but argues they can't be the default without gutting the principle against buy-outs.

Article 19: a yearly statement. Whoever you licensed or transferred rights to must give you, at least once a year, up-to-date and comprehensive information on how your work is used, in particular the modes of exploitation, all revenues generated and the remuneration due. If they sub-licensed your work and don't hold all the information, you can ask the sub-licensee, and your counterpart must tell you who that sub-licensee is. Countries may limit this where the paperwork would be disproportionate to the revenue, or where your contribution was not significant. For licence and transfer agreements, the duty applied from 7 June 2022.

Article 20: the bestseller clause. If the pay you agreed turns out to be disproportionately low compared with all the later revenue from your work, you or your representative can claim additional, appropriate and fair remuneration. The ECSA report points out that this goes further than older national bestseller clauses because it applies whether or not anyone could have foreseen the hit.

Article 21: dispute resolution. Disputes about statements or extra pay can go to a voluntary alternative dispute resolution procedure, and representative organisations (unions, songwriter guilds) can start one at the request of one or more creators. Going there doesn't remove your right to sue.

Article 22: use it or lose it. If you gave someone rights on an exclusive basis and they aren't exploiting the work, you can revoke the licence or transfer, in whole or in part, or end its exclusivity. You must wait a reasonable time after signing, notify them, and give them a deadline to start using the work. It doesn't apply if the lack of use is mainly your own fault.

Article 23 makes any contract term that blocks Articles 19 to 21 unenforceable. You can't sign these rights away in a standard deal.

Two exclusions matter. Collective management organisations (PROs and similar societies) are outside Articles 19 and 20, because a separate directive already covers their reporting. And the UK said in early 2020 that it had no plans to implement the directive, which means, in our reading, that a deal governed only by UK law doesn't carry these rights.

Same directive, different countries

Chapter 3 sets a minimum, and countries filled in the details differently. A June 2022 study for ECSA by Ula Furgał of the University of Glasgow found that 14 member states had implemented the chapter by 20 May 2022, and that most of them closely copied the directive's wording. A few went further:

• Ireland (S.I. 567/2021) requires a yearly description of worldwide exploitation, an itemised list of the euro value of revenues, and a notice of your rights. A counterpart who receives a claim for extra pay must reply in writing, addressing the substance, within one month.
• Italy, per the ECSA report, requires reports every six months, lets the communications regulator AGCOM fine breaches up to 1% of the previous year's turnover, and treats a missing report as grounds for adjusting the contract.
• Spain limits the adjustment claim to ten years after the transfer. Slovakia says it can't be made earlier than three years after publication.
• Germany and the Netherlands let creators claim extra pay directly from a sub-licensee whose earnings caused the imbalance.
• For revocation, the "reasonable time" before you can act ranges from three months to five years depending on the country and the type of work.

The report also flags weak spots. Hungary allows audiovisual reporting only on request, and most laws don't say what a creator has to do, step by step, to claim more.

Worked example: a topline that took off

Say you're a session singer and co-writer in Ireland. In 2022 you were paid a one-off fee (hypothetically, €1,500) for a vocal and topline on a dance track, signed over to a production company. In 2025 the track is synced into an advert and streams heavily across Europe.

1. Ask for the statement. The company owes you a yearly report anyway. If you haven't had one, ask in writing for the worldwide exploitation and itemised revenues.
2. Compare. If the revenue from the track runs to hundreds of thousands while you got €1,500, that is the gap Article 20 exists for.
3. Claim. Write a claim for additional, appropriate and fair remuneration. In Ireland the company has one month to respond on the substance.
4. Escalate. If they refuse, mediation or arbitration is available under the Irish rules, and Article 21 of the directive also lets a union or songwriter body start the process.

The law doesn't set a number. What counts as "fair" is decided case by case, taking into account your contribution and the norms of the sector.

How to ask for your transparency report

A short, dated email is enough. Include:

• your name, the contract (title, date, parties) and the works or recordings it covers;
• a reference to the national law implementing Article 19 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 (in Ireland, Regulation 27 of S.I. 567/2021);
• a request for the modes of exploitation, all revenues generated worldwide and the remuneration due, for each year since the duty applied;
• a request for the names of any sub-licensees holding information they don't have;
• a reasonable reply date, and a note that you're reserving your rights under the contract adjustment provision.

Keep copies. Confidentiality terms are allowed, but in Ireland a confidentiality agreement can't stop you using the information to exercise your rights.

What we think

On paper, this is the strongest pro-creator contract law Europe has passed. In practice it puts the burden on the artist. Apart from the yearly statement, which your counterpart owes you automatically, every right has to be asserted by the person with the least leverage, often against the label or publisher they hope to work with again. That is why the parts that work best are collective: Germany's sector-wide remuneration rules, and Article 21's rule that a union can bring a case for you. If you're a member of a musicians' union or songwriter guild, ask what it has done with this power. If the answer is "nothing", that's the real gap.

The winners so far are counterparts in countries that copied the text and added no deadline, no penalty and no procedure. The losers are session players and co-writers on buy-out terms, who are exactly who Article 20 was written for.

One open question deserves attention: "modes of exploitation" and "all revenues" plausibly include licences for AI training. That reading is our own and hasn't been tested in court, but an artist with an EU-governed deal has a statutory reason to ask whether their recordings or songs were licensed to an AI company, and for how much. We expect those requests to start arriving.

Checklist

• Find your contracts and check which country's law governs them.
• Note the date you signed: revocation needs a reasonable time to have passed.
• Ask for a statement for every exclusive deal where you haven't received one in the last year.
• Flag flat-fee deals on works that later earned well.
• Ask your union or guild whether it will run an Article 21 procedure for you.