SOKOJ

Sokoj is the Serbian (formerly Yugoslav) rights society. It was officially founded in 1950 as SAKOJ, which stood for "Savez kompozitora Jugoslavije" (Union of Yugoslav Composers) and initially did not engage in collection of royalties, which was conducted by the Institute for Authors' Rights. In 1954, the Institute splintered into SAKOJ's own Institute for Protection of Authors' Small Rights (Zavod za zaštitu autorskih malih prava, ZAMP) and the independent Yugoslav Authors' Agency. (Jugoslovenska autorska agencija, JAA) SAKOJ began collecting and paying out royalties in 1965 through OZAP (Odeljenje za zaštitu autorskih prava, Department for Protection of Authors' Rights) and became known as SOKOJ in the same year. OZAP changed its name to ZAMP (Zavod za zaštitu muzičkih autorskih prava, Institute for Protection of Authors' Musical Rights) and served to collect royalties only, which were then paid out by SOKOJ. The last major change in SOKOJ's organizational structure was in 1974, when the new ZAMP was folded back into SOKOJ, creating a unified authors' rights organization serving the entirety of Yugoslavia. Initially, SOKOJ was an acronym for "Savez organizacija kompozitora Jugoslavije" (Union of Yugoslav Composers' Organizations), but in 2006, the Union rebranded itself as "Sokoj - Organizacija muzičkih autora Srbije" (Sokoj - Serbian Music Authors' Organization), giving no particular meaning to "Sokoj", now a brand instead of an acronym.