Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of South Africa
South Africa's mechanical rights collecting society, formed in 2014 by a merger of SAMRO's mechanical rights arm and NORM.
- Based in
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Founded
- 2014
- Website
- capasso.co.za
CAPASSO (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association) is South Africa’s mechanical rights collecting society, based in Johannesburg. It licenses the reproduction of musical works, the mechanical right that arises whenever a recording is copied or transferred from one format to another, and collects and distributes the resulting royalties to composer, author and publisher members.
CAPASSO was incorporated in 2014 following a merger of the Southern African Music Rights Organisation’s (SAMRO) mechanical rights administration arm with NORM, the National Organisation of Reproduction Rights in Music. The move followed a 2012 government review that recommended a single collecting society per right in South Africa; SAMRO retained performance rights licensing and transferred its mechanical rights book to the new body. CAPASSO’s board carries equal representation from SAMRO and NORM alongside an independent chair, a structure written into its founding documents.
Since then CAPASSO has extended beyond its original mandate, licensing mechanical and performing rights for streaming on behalf of several African national societies, positioning itself as a regional one-stop shop so services like Apple Music can license across multiple African territories through a single agreement rather than country by country.