The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) says its member societies collected a record €15.5 billion for creators across music, audiovisual, visual arts, literature and drama in 2025. The organisation released its 2026 Global Collections Report on November 4.
Music collections reached €14.06 billion, up 11.9% year over year. Digital music collections rose 27.9% to €6.41 billion, equal to 45.6% of the music total. Live and background music collections reached €3.62 billion, overtaking television and radio as music’s second-largest source in the report.
Read the growth figure with its accounting context
CISAC notes that The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) is included in the report for the first time. Its addition accounts for approximately 52% of the increase in the report’s all-repertoire total. That makes the headline growth rate different from a like-for-like comparison with the prior year.
The report also gives an Africa snapshot: collections reached €92.4 million, up 3.2%, while digital collections rose 6.7% to €15.9 million. These totals describe collections reported by participating societies across the region; they are not a per-stream rate, a country-by-country breakdown, or an estimate of what an individual writer should expect to receive.
What songwriters and publishers can take from it
The report points to the importance of digital and live uses in collective collections, while reminding creators that accurate work registrations and ownership data matter when societies identify and distribute royalties. Individual outcomes still depend on repertoire, usage, rights shares, territory and the collection systems involved.
Source: CISAC’s 2026 Global Collections Report announcement.
Image credit: Techivation / Unsplash. Illustrative studio image.
