How Does SUISA Use Cincom ObjectStudio to Harmonize Music and Money with Its Applications?

How Did SUISA Use Cincom ObjectStudio to Harmonize Music and Money?

SUISA is the Cooperative Society of Music Authors and Publishers in Switzerland and was founded as a cooperative association in 1923. They now have approximately 36,000 composers, lyricists and music publishers as members. SUISA collects the royalties due to its members for the public use of its works in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. SUISA manages the rights of 2 million right holders through reciprocity agreements with over 100 sister societies around the world. SUISA employs 200 people in its Zurich, Lausanne and Lugano offices.

Mint Digital Services was founded in 2017 by SUISA and the US performance rights organization SESAC. The company manages invoicing and administration for SESAC; its subsidiary, the Harry Fox Agency; and SUISA’s transnational music licensing businesses with online providers. It also provides services to publishers.

SUISA is in charge of what is known as “small rights” such as non-dramatic musical works, concert versions of dramatic works and musical works for feature and television films. SUISA grants licenses to its customers—concert organizers, record producers, broadcasting companies and others—allowing them to perform, broadcast, distribute and reproduce music.

The development environment that SUISA chose to build its interface-driven, transaction-oriented services was Cincom Smalltalk. Nick Theofanidis, the Manager of the Databases and System Administration Group of SUISA, said:

“We wanted to develop some new applications for the Windows platform and, more recently, for the web, so we initially chose Cincom ObjectStudio. But when Cincom VisualWorks bundled with ObjectStudio as Cincom Smalltalk, we wanted to take advantage of the VisualWorks web technology and develop the user interfaces of our services using VisualWorks.”

Learn more about why SUISA chose Cincom Smalltalk here.