This study sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of collective management of copyright, through an analysis of the performance of not-for-profit copyright collecting societies in France and other European countries. These private institutions are currently one of the main solutions implemented to efficiently manage transactions in the digital era. Yet their performance needs to be assessed before any final conclusions can be drawn. The authors highlight the fact that that performance depends on their internal power structure and the modes of regulatory control which they apply. In all the cases analysed, it emerges that the most effective copyright collecting societies are those whose members have the most power. On the other hand, the influence of institutional constraints is more difficult to demonstrate. Although the very restrictive model prevailing in Germany can explain the better results of GEMA in terms of productive efficiency, compared to SACEM in France where regulatory control is less strict, SACEM distributes the money it collects more equally between its members.