In January, Indonesia’s national royalty body published a figure no Indonesian music institution had ever published before: Rp70,443,962,593 in collected royalties with no confirmed owner.
LMKN means Lembaga Manajemen Kolektif Nasional, the state-appointed collective management organisation, or CMO, that now collects all music royalties in Indonesia.
The unclaimed pool breaks down as Rp54.39 billion digital and Rp16.05 billion analog, traced to close to two million logged song uses. LMKN estimates somewhere between 30,000 and 300,000 rights holders, Indonesian and foreign, have never filed a claim. One regional-language songwriter is owed nearly Rp200 million, according to Medcom.
The money LMKN actually moved in 2025
Per LMKN’s own year-in-numbers performance report, presented in Jakarta by creators-division chair Andi Mulhanan Tombolotutu:
- Total 2025 collection: more than Rp200 billion.
- Analog collection, January to December 2025: Rp77,883,213,363.
- Total distributed under the current board: Rp170,983,596,134.
- Of that, digital was Rp125.87 billion and overseas income Rp27.94 billion.
- Analog general was Rp14.96 billion; analog live event just Rp2.20 billion.
- Rp151.83 billion reached 16,332 rights holders through member societies.
Read the split again. Roughly three quarters of what Indonesian songwriters received came from digital. Indonesian publishing income is now a streaming-metadata problem, not a karaoke-bar problem.
One collector, and soon far fewer societies
Since 27 August 2025, under circular SE.06.LMKN.VIII-2025, LMKN is the only body permitted to collect music royalties in Indonesia. Individual LMKs lost collection authority entirely.
Minister of Law Supratman Andi Agtas put it plainly, as reported by LMKN: royalty collection is LMKN’s full authority, and LMK no longer has authority to collect. The government has signalled it wants roughly 17 societies reduced to two or three.
The 2026 rule unregistered writers should read twice
A joint LMKN and LMK session on 15 April 2026 set this year’s distribution policy under Copyright Law No. 28 of 2014 and Government Regulation No. 56 of 2021. ANTARA reported two lanes:
- Log sheet. Royalties paid directly against documented usage data.
- Non-log sheet. Sampling, proxy, and a new Unlogged Performance Allocation, or UPA.
The catch is in the fine print. Members who receive only UPA for two consecutive periods, with no data-based distribution at all, lose UPA eligibility in the following period.
Translated for working artists: if your catalogue never surfaces in usage data, the safety net expires. Marcell Siahaan, LMKN’s related-rights chair, has framed the reform around data accuracy.
Concerts are no longer the performer’s bill
Songwriter Ari Bias sued Agnez Mo over three 2023 concert performances. A commercial court awarded Rp1.5 billion in January 2025. In August 2025 the Supreme Court reversed on procedural grounds in Decision 825 K/Pdt.Sus-HKI/2025, holding that a live concert involves promoters and CMOs who were never joined to the case, per Rouse.
A week before that ruling, Ministerial Regulation 27/2025 stated that the obligation to pay royalties for commercial use of music in public services sits with the event organiser or business owner.
Writing in The Jakarta Post in July, Randy Levin Virgiawan argued those performance royalties remain a routinely ignored debt owed to LMKN across the live circuit.
What an Indonesian release should do about it
- Register your compositions with an LMK. Your distributor pays recording royalties, not performing or mechanical royalties.
- Keep ISRC and ISWC codes consistent across every release and every cover version.
- Deliver full writer and publisher credits in the metadata. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the standard that carries those credits to DSPs and matching engines.
- Check the published unclaimed list before assuming you have nothing sitting there.
- If you promote shows, budget the LMKN line item. It is now legally yours.
Indonesia has already shown it can hold its own charts, with local repertoire owning 78% of its Spotify charts while most of the money arrives from abroad, and a market where fewer than 1% pay for streaming. Vietnam is running a parallel reform next door.
The recording side of that money still arrives through whoever delivers your catalogue. Clean, DDEX-native delivery with accurate writer credits and transparent split reporting is what keeps an Indonesian release out of the unclaimed pile, and it is the part an artist can actually control this quarter.
