Songwriter royalties hit a record $15.9B in 2025, with The MLC driving the jump
CISAC counts €14.06 billion collected worldwide, up 11.9%. Without The MLC’s first-time inclusion, growth was 5.3%.
Songwriters collected a record €14.06 billion ($15.9 billion) in royalties worldwide in 2025, CISAC’s 2026 Global Collections Report shows. That is up 11.9% from a restated €12.56 billion in 2024. Dollar figures use the IRS’s 2025 average exchange rate.
Most of the growth comes from The MLC, which collects US mechanical royalties from streaming and download services. It joined CISAC in 2025 and appears in the totals for the first time. Without it, global music collections grew 5.3%.
US digital collections rose 71.3% to €2.39 billion ($2.69 billion). Excluding The MLC they were €1.55 billion, up 11.4%. That €835 million gap accounts for more than half of the €1.50 billion global increase. Total US collections climbed 29.7% to €4.07 billion ($4.60 billion), which keeps the US the largest market. France (€1.59 billion) and the UK (€1.28 billion) held second and third.
Digital is now 45.6% of the total, at €6.41 billion, up 27.9%. Live & Background, which covers concerts, festivals and music played in shops, restaurants, hotels and gyms, overtook TV & Radio for the first time to become the second-largest source. It grew 7.3% to €3.62 billion, or 25.8% of the total. TV & Radio fell 3.0% to €3.32 billion, its lowest since 2021.
Physical royalties from CDs and video slipped 0.9% to €326 million, a much smaller drop than the 13.2% fall a year earlier.
CISAC President Björn Ulvaeus used his foreword to address AI, writing that “human creativity is not the enemy of artificial intelligence. It is the reason artificial intelligence exists.” Director General Gadi Oron said that “as we enter the age of AI, past growth cannot be taken for granted.”
