Songwriter royalty collections just hit a new global high, and the first thing worth saying about the number is that it is both real and a little inflated by how the books are kept.
On Wednesday, November 4, CISAC published its 2026 Global Collections Report, covering 2025. Music royalties collected by authors’ societies rose 11.9% to a record €14.06 billion, about $15.87 billion at the IRS average 2025 exchange rate used by Music Business Worldwide.
Across all five repertoires CISAC tracks, total creator collections reached €15.5 billion, up 11.3%. That is the headline the industry will paste into slide decks this week. The useful part is what sits under it.
The numbers, in one place
Music collections by income type in 2025, with year-on-year change, from CISAC’s music section as summarised by CISAC member society APRA AMCOS and by MBW. USD for the music total only uses MBW’s IRS-average conversion.
| Income type | € billion | YoY | Share of music |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital (streaming, downloads, VOD licensing) | 6.41 | +27.9% | 45.6% |
| Live & Background | 3.62 | +7.3% | 25.8% |
| TV & Radio | 3.32 | -3.0% | 23.6% |
| Music total | 14.06 (~$15.87) | +11.9% | 100% |
Music repertoire only. USD for the music total uses MBW's IRS 2025 average conversion. Live performance royalties alone were €1.4bn (+14.9%), a subset of Live & Background.
Digital is now nearly half of music collections. Live & Background overtook TV & Radio for the first time, rising 7.3% to €3.62 billion.
Regional totals below are CISAC's all-repertoire collections (music plus audiovisual, visual arts, literature and drama), not music-only.
| Region | € billion | YoY | Digital €bn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | 8.09 | +6.2% | 2.57 (+13.1%) |
| Canada / USA | ~4.5 | +26.5% | 2.6 (+63.5%) |
| Asia-Pacific | 2.01 | +4.8% | >1.0 (51.3% of region) |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 0.847 | +9.8% | 0.360 (+10.3%) |
| Africa | 0.092 | +3.2% | 0.016 (+6.7%) |
All repertoires (music plus audiovisual, visual arts, literature and drama), not music-only. Canada/USA growth is inflated by The MLC's first-time inclusion.
What the MLC-adjusted growth actually says
More than half of the annual increase in those all-repertoire collections came from the first-time inclusion of the US Mechanical Licensing Collective, which joined CISAC in 2025. Excluding The MLC, global collections across all repertoires grew 5.3%, not the headline 11.3%.
That is still growth. It is not the victory lap the raw chart suggests. Music alone grew 11.9% to €14.06 billion, a separate, music-only line that should not be stacked against the 5.3% all-repertoire figure.
US digital music collections jumped 71.3% to €2.39 billion with The MLC inside the total, and 11.4% to €1.55 billion without it, according to MBW's read of the music section. The €835 million gap is more than half of the €1.50 billion rise in global music collections.
A big slice of this year's "record" is better measurement of money that was already moving through the US streaming system. Newly counted is not the same as newly earned.
The cleaner story is the mix shift. Digital is now 45.6% of music collections. Live & Background overtook TV & Radio for the first time.
Broadcast fell to its lowest total since 2021. Songwriters who only exist on playlists are more exposed to platform and collecting-society rules than to the radio era those rules replaced.
Geography is just as uneven. Europe still collects the most. Canada/USA posts the flashiest all-repertoire growth rate (+26.5%) because The MLC finally sits inside the global total.
Asia-Pacific cleared €2 billion for the first time. Africa's all-repertoire total rose 3.2%. Music-only cuts in some CISAC coverage still show weaker African music collections, which is a reminder not to mix the two scopes.
Corporate results in the same week sharpen the contrast. On Thursday, November 5, Sony's combined recorded music and publishing revenues hit a quarterly high of about $3.15 billion, per MBW's dollar conversion of Sony Group's calendar Q3 figures.
Publishing alone contributed $744.8 million. The money is concentrating where catalogs, platforms and collecting machinery already work.
What this means for you if you write songs
Collections are society money, not your bank balance. Societies collect, then distribute after admin fees, splits, unidentified shares and the delays that still haunt live reporting. The practical response to a record year is housekeeping, not champagne.
(1) Join a performing-rights organisation and keep your works registered. In the US that usually means choosing among groups such as those compared in our ASCAP vs BMI vs SESAC guide, then registering every song with accurate writer and publisher splits.
In the UK, start collecting through PRS for Music. Unregistered works do not magically appear in CISAC's €14 billion.
(2) If you control your own US publishing, join The MLC and claim unmatched shares. The MLC collects US digital audio mechanicals under the blanket license.
Self-administered writers and publishers can get started on The MLC Portal, register missing works, and use the Claiming Tool when a song is only partly claimed.
(3) Hunt historical unmatched ("black box") mechanicals. DSPs transferred pre-2021 unmatched royalties to The MLC. Members can search unmatched usage and propose matches in the Member Hub.
The MLC explains the process on its royalty income tracking page and in its help article on historical unmatched royalties. If a publisher already collects for you, send them the public work link and ask them to fix the data.
(4) Treat live and background as their own income line. Live & Background is now music's second-largest collection source, up 7.3% in 2025.
That money reaches writers through PRO distributions when venues, festivals, shops and gyms are licensed and when set lists or cue sheets actually identify the songs. File set lists. Check that your PRO has the correct publishers.
Do not assume a sold-out room paid you because the venue paid a blanket fee somewhere upstream.
(5) Do not confuse neighbouring rights with songwriting royalties. CISAC's figures are authors' society collections for compositions.
Performer and label neighbouring rights, for example SoundExchange in the US or PPL in the UK, are a separate pot. If you sing or play on records, register there too. A streaming hit can pay the composition side and the recording side through different doors.
(6) Watch platform floors and catalog dilution. Society totals can rise while a mid-tier writer's per-stream cheque barely moves, especially on services that set payment thresholds or face industrial-scale uploads.
Comparing how Tidal and Spotify handle catalog and payouts is still worth an afternoon if streaming is your main digital path.
What to watch next year
Three tests matter more than another record total. First, CISAC's 2027 report should show Canada/USA growth without a one-off MLC onboarding bump. If the underlying mid-single-digit all-repertoire pace holds near this year's 5.3% ex-MLC rate, that is the real trend.
Second, Live & Background needs cleaner set-list and usage data, which CISAC itself flags as a distribution challenge even as live royalties hit €1.4 billion. Growth that cannot be matched to writers becomes another black box with better branding.
Third, AI licensing. Ulvaeus and Oron both used the report to warn that past growth cannot be taken for granted. Watch whether societies land output-side money from generative tools, not only speeches about human creativity.
The Paris Commitment is a position paper until it shows up as a line item.
So treat the €14 billion music figure as proof that the collective-management machine still works at scale, not as proof that the average writer is getting rich. Celebrate The MLC's visibility. Do the registration work.
And judge next year's report on the all-repertoire MLC-adjusted rate, the live-matching rate and whether AI pays into the pot it is already draining.
