Songwriters and creators were paid a record €15.5 billion in 2025, and streaming did the heavy lifting

The people who write the songs had a record year. CISAC, the confederation that represents 228 authors' societies in 111 countries and territories, published its Global Collections Report on 4 November 2026, and the headline is €15.5 billion collected for creators in 2025, up 11.3% on the year before.

One caveat first, and the report is upfront about it: this is not a like-for-like jump. The figures include The Mechanical Licensing Collective in the United States for the first time, and that accounts for about 52% of the increase. Strip it out and growth is real but smaller. Even so, collections are now almost €7 billion above where they stood in 2016.

Where the money came from

Digital is now the biggest source by a distance. Digital collections reached €6.57 billion, up 27.9%, which is 42.4% of everything collected. Live and background music (concerts, venues, shops, cafes) is second at €3.87 billion, up 7.7%. Live music on its own rose 14.9% to €1.4 billion, a reminder of how much of the touring boom ends up with writers as well as headliners.

TV and radio is the one major category going the wrong way: €3.82 billion, down 2.6%, now third.

Music dominates the whole picture. It brought in €14.06 billion, up 11.9%, and music collections have grown 83.5% since 2016. Audiovisual (€0.76 billion), drama, literature and visual arts make up the rest.

The regional picture

• Europe: €8.09 billion, up 6.2%, still 52.2% of the global total.
• Canada and the USA: nearly €4.5 billion, up 26.5%, the fastest growth anywhere, helped by the MLC and a 63.5% rise in digital to €2.6 billion.
• Asia-Pacific: €2.01 billion, up 4.8%, and the first time the region has passed €2 billion. Digital is now more than half of it (51.3%).
• Latin America and the Caribbean: €847 million, up 9.8%.
• Africa: €92.4 million, up 3.2%. It is the smallest region by a long way, which says as much about collection gaps as it does about how much music the continent makes.

The AI warning

CISAC did not publish the number as a victory lap. Director General Gadi Oron said that "as we enter the age of AI, past growth cannot be taken for granted." The report follows CISAC's June adoption of the Paris Commitment on AI, which asks governments, tech companies and the cultural industries to keep human creativity recognised, protected and fairly paid. CISAC President Björn Ulvaeus, the ABBA songwriter, put it plainly: "Human creativity is not something to be replaced or bypassed."

Why it matters

For anyone who follows an artist's streaming numbers, this is the other half of the story: the money that flows to the people who wrote the song, collected society by society across borders. Digital is the engine of that growth in every region the report breaks out. The full report and data are on CISAC's site.