About – RECORDED ARTISTS ACTORS PERFORMERS

About RAAP

Recorded Artists Actors Performers (RAAP) is a not-for-profit organisation established by performers, for performers. Our core mission is to ensure that musicians, actors, and other performers are fairly paid when their recorded performances are used publicly.

Following the introduction of the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, RAAP was set up to administer and distribute performance royalties in Ireland. We represent both featured and non-featured performers – including main artists, session musicians, and actors – who are entitled to payment when a sound recording or audiovisual work they have contributed to is communicated to the public, whether in Ireland or abroad.

RAAP is based in Ireland and has signed reciprocal agreements with over 55 territories worldwide. These agreements allow us to collect royalties for our members internationally and ensure they are fairly represented across global markets. Since our launch in 2001, we have distributed over €115 million to 100,000 performers in Ireland and overseas.

We are active participants in global rights networks, including SCAPR and AEPO-ARTIS, and advocate for performers’ rights through international forums and partnerships. RAAP also works under EU and WIPO frameworks to ensure compliance and cooperation across jurisdictions.

In addition to royalty collection and distribution, RAAP provides support services to members including registration, claims management, international royalty tracking, and general advice on performers’ rights. We engage directly with our members to offer guidance and assist with resolving rights or payment issues.

RAAP is governed by a board that includes performer representatives, ensuring that our decision-making remains transparent, accountable, and in the best interest of our members. We are committed to strong governance and operate with a member-first ethos in all areas of our work.

We continue to lobby the Irish Government for legislative improvements to protect performers’ rights in an evolving music and media landscape. As new modes of use emerge – including streaming, online radio, and digital broadcasting – RAAP is focused on ensuring performers receive their fair share of income generated by these platforms.

We also provide educational resources and outreach to help artists understand and exercise their rights. Our belief is simple: performers’ creative contributions enrich the cultural life of our communities, and they deserve to be recognised and rewarded for their work.

Performers are vital contributors to our shared cultural capital – the stories, sounds, and expressions that shape identity, foster understanding, and connect people across generations and borders. Protecting their rights is not only a matter of fairness, but an investment in the cultural wealth of society itself.

RAAP – Your Performance, Your Rights, Our Mission.

Getting Paid

RAAP makes royalty payments to members every month. Once your account has at least €20 collected, we’ll include you in the next payment run.

You’ll get an email letting you know when a payment is on the way. Your royalties will go straight into your bank account by electronic transfer. You can log in to the RAAP online portal at any time to view your payment statement. It shows how much you’ve received, where the money came from (which country), and which tracks earned you royalties.

Irish Royalties (Domestic Payments)

Royalties from Irish radio, TV, and public performance are paid out twice a year. This process involves the analysis and processing of over 3 million individual airplays across Irish radio and television.

International Royalties (Foreign Payments)

RAAP has agreements in over 55 countries around the world. These partnerships allow us to collect royalties when your music or performances are used in other territories.

International payments come in throughout the year and are included in your regular monthly payments from RAAP.

For a full list of territories where we can protect your rights see here.

Your Royalties Explained

Neighbouring Rights:

Neighbouring Rights or related rights are the rights of a creative work protecting performers, phonogram producers and broadcasting organisations. They are not the rights associated with the works actual author. Authors have their own protected ‘Authors Rights’. This right for performers co-exists alongside the right for authors hence the terminology ‘Neighbouring Rights’.

In Ireland and abroad the following Performers Rights are remunerated for:

Public Performance:

When recordings are used in public places, bars, restaurants, disco’s etc. you are entitled to a royalty if you have performed on that recording.

Broadcast:

If a recording that you have contributed to is broadcast on radio you are entitled to a royalty.

In many international territories the following Performers Rights are remunerated for:

Lending: when a sound recording is borrowed from a library for example.

Rental: similar to lending but the user rents the sound recording.

Private Copy: generating a royalty when a blank tape or mobile device used for recording music for personal use is sold.

Audio-visual: Many countries compensate Actors for the use of their audio-visual works when they are copied for private use, retransmitted on cable channels, or broadcast publicly.

Digital: Digital royalties are fees that service providers and webcasters in the United States are required by law to pay for streaming musical content.

Board of Directors

Kieran Goss

Chairman

Kieran Goss has long been hailed as one of Ireland’s leading songwriters and performers. He continues to write, record and tour internationally as half of the duo Kieran Goss & Annie Kinsella. Although he views himself first and foremost as a songwriter and performing artist, quietly dedicating himself to a career of writing, recording and releasing his albums on his own label, his legal background and over 30 years’ experience as an independent recording and touring artist has made him a committed and articulate advocate for the protection of performers’ rights. He has been a director and member of RAAP since its formation in 2001. Following the recent death of his friend and colleague, Paddy Cole, the Board of Directors of RAAP unanimously voted Kieran as the new Chairman of RAAP.

Andrew Basquille

Company Secretary

Andrew Basquille is a songwriter, singer, promoter and broadcaster. He formed his band Factor One in 1979. Andrew is a regular singer at An GóilínTraditional Singers’ Club and has been guest at the Frank Harte Festival. In collaboration with composer Eric Sweeney he is librettist of an opera adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. His show Twelve Songs and a Tilly featuring songs in, by, about Joyce has been performed in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris.

Mary Black

For over a quarter-century, singer Mary Black has been a dominant presence in Irish music, both at home and abroad. Mary has released 11 studio albums all of which achieved platinum sales status and spawned countless hits. She has shared stages, TV shows and recording studios with some of the most revered performers of her time. She has also played a front-line role in bringing Irish music, folk and contemporary, to an increasingly appreciative and ever-growing global audience.

Richie Buckley

Richie Buckley saxophonist has been a member of The Van Morrison band on and off since 1984.

In 2008 Richie performed with Van on his latest album “Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl” which led to six tours of the USA from 2009 – 2010. Most recently he has toured with fellow RAAP board member Mary Black. Richie has also recorded and performed with many major Irish artists including The Cranberries, Christy Moore, Paul Brady, Sharon Shannon and Bill Whelan. An talented musician, Richie has scored five documentary films and two feature films, including John Boorman’s 1998 movie, The General starring Brendan Gleeson.

Philip Magee

Philip Magee has been working behind the scenes for more than 17 years, supporting artists like Kodaline, The Script, Gavin James, Miles Kane, The Academic, Wild Youth and many more.

Working as a music producer, mix engineer and music industry professional, Philip has a keen understanding of the business, across a wide range of genres, working also in A&R, movie music supervision and music consultancy.

To date, he’s worked on songs with over six billion streams, and albums that sold over four million copies.

Alan McEvoy

Alan McEvoy has been involved in the music industry for over 20 years. Following a decade as an entertainment accountant in Dublin, in 1995 he relocated to Limerick, working with The Cranberries. Three years later, in 1998, Alan set up, Live Wire Business Management attending to the financial affairs of many of Ireland’s biggest musical exports including, amongst others Boyzone, Ronan Keating, Samantha Mumba, Westlife etc. and grown to add international acts to their already impressive roster of clients.

Paul Noonan

Paul has released seven studio albums, five of those reaching Top 3 in the Irish album charts, as frontman of the band Bell X1. With hits such as Eve, the Apple of My Eye, Flame, Rocky Took A Lover and The Great Defector, Bell X1 continue to reinvent their sound in a career spanning almost 25 years.

An accomplished musician, Paul has collaborated and toured as a drummer with artists including Joan as Policewoman, Martha Wainwright, Gemma Hayes and Cathy Davey. As a solo artist and collaborator on various musical projects including Printer Clips, Starboard Home, and Imagining Ireland: 21st Century Song.

Róisín O

One of Ireland’s most celebrated solo artists, Róisín O released her debut album ‘The Secret Life of Blue’ in 2012 and has gone on to release a number of hugely successful singles including hits such as ‘Give It Up’ and ‘Heart + Bones’ and most recently as one of the artists involved in the No.1 single from Irish Women in Harmony, a cover of The Cranberries classic ‘Dreams’.

As a young recording Artist and an industry employee, Róisín is keen to provide a voice for the vastly talented and growing number of young Recording Artists and Session Musicians emerging in the Irish Music Industry.

Ciaran Tourish

A native of Buncrana in Donegal, Ciaran is an accomplished musician on tin whistle and fiddle. Ciaran, a former member of Altan, has worked on solo projects and with artists such as Matt Molloy, Mary Black, Maura O’Connell, Dé Danann and Jerry Douglas and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis to name but a few.