Where Do Songwriter Royalties Come From? What CISAC's 2026 Report Shows About Streaming, Live Music and Radio

If you write songs, where does the money actually come from? In early November 2026, CISAC, the network of 228 authors' societies in 111 countries and territories, published its answer for 2025. Its Global Collections Report 2026 counts what those societies collected for creators.

This guide takes the music numbers and turns them into five checks for your own catalog. One caution first: the headline growth has an asterisk.

The headline: a record, with an asterisk

Societies collected €14.06 billion for music creators in 2025, up 11.9% on the year, according to Music Week and Music Business Worldwide (MBW). MBW converts that to about $15.9 billion at the IRS's 2025 average annual rate. Music collections are up 83.5% since 2016. Across all art forms, CISAC counts €15.5 billion, up 11.3%.

The asterisk is The MLC, the U.S. collective that pays streaming mechanical royalties. It was counted in the report for the first time, and without it growth was 5.3%. In MBW's tally The MLC adds €835 million, more than half of the €1.50 billion increase, so U.S. digital collections rose 71.3% with it but 11.4% without it.

Geography matters too. For music, Western Europe remains the biggest region at €6.35 billion. France collected €1.59 billion and the UK €1.28 billion, and the U.S. total rose 29.7% to €4.07 billion, or 3.1% without The MLC.

Where the money came from

Here is how the music total splits, using CISAC's categories.

• Digital: €6.41 billion, up 27.9%, or 45.6% of the total. Without The MLC, up 11.2%. CISAC has described digital revenue as coming from audio streaming and video-on-demand subscriptions.
• Live and background: €3.62 billion, up 7.3%, or 25.8%. Live music rose 14.9% to €1.4 billion, and background music, such as music played in shops and restaurants, rose 5.6% to €1.2 billion. This category overtook TV and radio for the first time.
• TV and radio: €3.32 billion, down 3.0%, or 23.6%, the lowest total since 2021.
• Everything else: CDs and video brought in €326 million, down 0.9%, and private copying €252 million, down 6.6%.

In one line, of every €100 collected for music in 2025, about €46 came from digital, €26 from live and background, and €24 from TV and radio.

What it means for a songwriter: five checks

• Streaming first. The biggest bucket reaches you only if each song is registered with your PRO (performing rights organization) and, in the U.S., with The MLC, and if the recordings are matched to the song. See registering with The MLC and when The MLC pays.
• Live shows. Live music grew 14.9%, faster than digital once The MLC is set aside. Report your own gigs to your PRO. Our guide to getting paid for live performances shows how and when.
• Radio is the shrinking bucket. TV and radio was the only one of the three big sources that fell, so do not build an income plan on airplay alone.
• Songs that travel. After the U.S., France, the UK, Japan and Germany are the next-biggest digital markets, so songs can earn far from home. That makes clean data matter more: Songtrust warns that if co-writers report different shares, or the total passes 100%, royalties are withheld until it is resolved. A publishing administrator is one way to collect abroad.
• License fees sit outside these totals. Societies count what they collect, so money paid to you directly for a license is a separate stream. On Starchild, partners keep their copyright and earn 50% of each sale, minus the payment fee, and sales show in the dashboard as they happen. The royalties above begin when an artist releases the recording. See from one play to your bank account.

A bigger pot is not a bigger paycheck

Collections are what societies took in, not what each songwriter earned. MIDiA Research surveyed close to 800 songwriters worldwide in spring 2025. The average annual income from songwriting among full-time professionals was $25,400, which MIDiA called 'hardly enough to sustain oneself without supplemental income.' In its 2024 survey, 67% of songwriters named a lack of meaningful streaming income as their biggest challenge.

MIDiA also found that 'finding new revenue streams' was the most popular goal, that songwriters on creator marketplaces earned more income, and that many take on extra roles such as performing or producing. The lesson is not that the pot is too small. It is that songwriter income comes in layers, and each layer has its own registration or report.

Try this: a 15-minute income map

• List every payment you received in the past 12 months: your PRO, The MLC, any administrator, live-show reports, marketplace sales and direct fees.
• Sort them into CISAC's buckets: digital, live and background, TV and radio, and other.
• Look for the empty buckets. A writer with streams but no live reports, or a catalog with no MLC statements, has a registration to check.
• Fix one thing this month, and put the rest on your year-end list. Our year-end royalty and registration checklist walks through it.

What CISAC says comes next

CISAC's director general, Gadi Oron, called the growth 'a strong and encouraging signal' but warned that 'past growth cannot be taken for granted' as artificial intelligence arrives. Board chair Dean Ormston said the central challenge is 'ensuring creators are paid when their work is used.' That is a good reason to keep your registrations and records clean now.

A note on the numbers: euro figures are CISAC's, as reported by Music Week and MBW, and dollar figures are MBW's conversion. CISAC restated last year's total, and The MLC's arrival makes the comparison with earlier years uneven, so read the growth rates with that in mind.

Sources

• CISAC: Global Collections Report 2026
• CISAC: Global Collections Report 2025
• Music Business Worldwide: 5 things to know about CISAC's global report as songwriter royalty collections hit record $15.9b in 2025, with $900m from The MLC and AI in focus, by Murray Stassen (Nov 4, 2026)
• Music Week: CISAC, Music collections up 12% in 2025 to €14 billion, by Andre Paine (Nov 4, 2026)
• Hypebot (MIDiA Research): The music business is splitting in two. Here's why songwriters are reinventing their role, by Tatiana Cirisano (2025)
• MIDiA Research: Songwriters, we want to hear from you! Raise your voice in MIDiA's new survey (2025)
• MIDiA Research: Songwriter survey 2025, Reinvention
• Songtrust: How Split Sheets Work, by Andrew Parks