SABAM is the Belgian association of authors, composers and publishers. The acronym stands for "Société d’Auteurs Belge – Belgische Auteurs Maatschappij".
SABAM was founded in 1922 at the instigation of the composer Emiel Hullebroeck under the name NAVEA. In 1945 it changed to its current name. The SABAM a Civil Co-operative Society (CVBA) with Belgian authors, composers and publishers as members. They represent the interests of its members in the field of intellectual property rights and collect all the royalties due to its members in Belgium, and sister organizations in other countries (such as Buma / Stemra in the Netherlands), and then distributes these rights to the copyright holders.
Unlike Buma / Stemra, which is limited to music copyright, SABAM is active in all disciplines where copyrights are involved. The members of SABAM are not only composers, poets and musicians text, but also writers, poets, artists, publishers, visual artists, architects, designers, choreographers, photographers, film and television directors, etc.
SABAM also monitor the Internet to check illegal supply of art. In 2004 SABAM filed a complaint against ISP Tiscali because of the illegal distribution of music over the Internet. A restaurant owner from Brussels was fined because he had a picture of the Atomium on his website.
In October 2007, the copyright association study by a Brussels court on suspicion of falsifying financial statements, the abuse of the confidence of its members and the laundering of misappropriated funds. Following the investigation, which lasted three years, was a complaint by the Walloon composer Philippe Delhaye.
In August 2009 Google removed several music videos for Belgian artists from its video web site YouTube because of complaints made by SABAM.
Their headquarters is located at 75-77 rue d'Arlon in Brussels.