Brazil is one of a small number of markets where a stream is legally a public performance. That single fact bolts a second payout rail onto every Brazilian release.
That rail pays this month. The streaming money moving through Brazil’s collecting body in August 2026 is for plays that happened in January, February and March.
The 2017 ruling that created a second Brazilian royalty
ECAD means Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição, the central office that collects and distributes public performance royalties for Brazil’s seven music associations.
In February 2017, the Superior Tribunal de Justiça decided REsp 1.559.264/RJ and held that offering music by streaming is public execution, which creates a new triggering event for copyright collection. Simulcasting was treated as an autonomous use rather than an extension of a broadcast. Machado Meyer’s summary of the criteria is the clearest read of what the court tested.
The practical result is that a Spotify or YouTube play in Brazil generates the recording and publishing money your distributor reports, and separately a public performance claim ECAD bills to the platform itself.
Digital is now the largest thing ECAD collects
The 2025 numbers, per Mundo da Música’s breakdown of the ECAD annual report and Música & Mercado:
- R$2.1 billion collected, up 15 percent. R$1.7 billion distributed, up 10 percent.
- Digital services were 33.6 percent of collections and grew 47.2 percent, the fastest of any segment. TV followed at 20.4 percent, live shows at 19.5 percent, radio at 7.1 percent.
- More than 345,000 rights holders were paid, averaging about R$4,600 each for the year.
- 78 percent of the distributed total went to Brazilian holders.
- ECAD says it identified 5.8 trillion executions on digital platforms.
The first half of 2026 kept the curve. ECAD distributed more than R$1 billion in H1, up 16.5 percent year on year, to over 312,000 holders. Live shows alone paid R$151 million, up 25.4 percent, which matters before a September that puts Rock in Rio back in Rio de Janeiro.
Why August pays for January
The streaming rubric is quarterly and lagged. Per the Abramus distribution calendar:
- Payments land in February, May, August and November.
- The August run covers January to March executions. November covers April to June.
- Distribution is built from the play lists the platforms send, matched automatically against registered works and phonograms.
- Of what ECAD collects, 85 percent goes out to the associations for their members, 5 percent funds the associations and 10 percent stays with ECAD.
- On the neighbouring rights side, the performer category and the phonogram producer category split their portion 50-50.
So a track that peaked in Brazil in January sees its public performance money in August, five to seven months later, after a 15 percent administrative haircut.
What an indie release should actually do
The gap most self-releasing artists fall into is assuming a distributor collects this. It does not. ECAD pays associations, and associations pay their registered members.
- Register the work and the phonogram with an association such as Abramus, UBC or Socinpro. An unregistered phonogram with perfect distributor metadata still fails the ECAD match.
- Register both hats. Composer credit and performer credit are separate claims, and the producer claim is separate again.
- Keep the ISRC on the release identical to the one registered with the association. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the unique identifier per recording.
- Plan cash flow around the lag. Recording royalties from your distributor arrive monthly. This layer arrives four times a year, backdated.
- Send setlists for every paid show. ECAD credits show automation for the 25.4 percent jump in live distributions.
Context for scale: Brazil’s recorded music market reached R$3.958 billion in 2025, up 14.1 percent, with streaming at R$3.4 billion, per Pró-Música Brasil figures reported by Agência Brasil. ECAD’s R$1.7 billion sits alongside that, not inside it.
Two pipes, two clocks, two sets of paperwork. Getting the recording side right with a distributor that files clean DDEX metadata, where DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, is what makes the collective side matchable at all. More on the market underneath this: Brazil at No. 8 globally, and why sertanejo’s money stays home.
