Founded in 1991, it is authorised by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to act as a copyright collective in the field of phonogram and videogram producers' rights.

ZPAV was officially founded on 11 July 1991, following the recognition of the IFPI given in June of that year.

This was followed in December with the right to collect a share of the 3% blank media tax, in the name of the producers.

[2] In 1996, ZPAV started signing agreements about collecting commissions for the broadcasting of sound recordings.

[2] In 1998, together with the Foundation for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (Polish: Fundacja Ochrony Twórczości Audiowizualnej, FOTA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA), ZPAV found the Anti-Piracy Coalition.

Airplay monitoring starts when an agreement with Nielsen Music Control is signed in 2006.

ZPAV certifies sales of albums, singles and videos, for media sold from 1993.

Originally, each media piece was counted separately,[11] but this practice was cancelled in February 2013.

[12] It also included a separate video single category, for media with playing time of up to 15 minutes, which was genre-independent, with thresholds of 5,000/10,000/50,000.

Its status in the Polish public can be compared to the US Grammy and the British BRIT Award.

[2] Since 1999, nominees and winners have been selected by the Phonographic Academy (Polish: Akademia Fonograficzna) which was founded by the General Assembly of ZPAV in 1998 and now consists of nearly 1000 artists, creators, journalists.

The 2010 winners (for sales in 2009) were the Polish "Nie mogę Cię zapomnieć" by Agnieszka Chylińska and the foreign "Womanizer" by Britney Spears.