Moldova has had no legally designated music royalty collector since 6 March 2026, and under Article 103 of Law No. 230/2022 no other organisation is allowed to collect in its place.
The designations that lapsed were ordinary three-year appointments. AGEPI, the State Agency for Intellectual Property, confirmed in an official statement that four 2023 decisions naming the associations AUTORITY and ARTTON as collectors ceased to have legal effect on 5 March 2026.
From the next day, for the rights those decisions covered, there was no collector at all.
Why one lapsed decision freezes an entire country
A collective management organisation, or CMO, licenses music on behalf of songwriters, performers and producers and distributes what it collects. Most countries stop there.
Moldova adds a second layer. For rights under mandatory or extended collective management, invoicing is not something every licensed CMO may do. Only the single organisation designated as collector, or a common collection structure, may issue the bill, and the designation comes by decision of the AGEPI director published in the Monitorul Oficial.
That is a single point of failure by design. When the designation lapses, the result is not a backlog. It is a void in which a radio station, a bar or a cable operator has no one it can lawfully pay.
The number under dispute
The National Association COPYRIGHT put the cost at more than 7 million lei in uncollected remuneration, and said the first-half payout normally distributed in July would not happen. Its president Leon Știrbu described the sum as practically irrecoverable, in remarks reported by ZUGO on 6 July 2026.
AGEPI rejects the framing. It says designation is not a formality but a legal procedure requiring proof that an applicant can collect, administer and distribute transparently, and that a working group was created by Director’s Order No. 67 of 25 May 2026 to examine the question.
The wider system was moving at the same time. AGEPI suspended AUTORITY as a copyright CMO by Decision 28/967 of 11 June 2026, and ARTTON by Decision 30/1115 of 3 July 2026, rectified on 6 July. Its published register of decisions under Law 230/2022 currently ends at No. 34/1265 of 30 July 2026, with no new collector named. That is 167 days without one.
Which of your money is frozen, and which is not
This is the distinction most Moldovan rightsholders are not drawing, and it decides where effort is worth spending.
- Frozen. Domestic public performance, broadcast, cable retransmission and private copying remuneration. All of it runs through the collector.
- Untouched. Recorded-music revenue from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and the rest. That is contractual money moving from platform to distributor to artist. No collector sits anywhere in that path.
- At risk differently. Foreign writer income routed home through a society’s reciprocal agreements. If the society holding your mandate is suspended, ask in writing whether that routing still runs.
Moldova has 2.40 million internet users at 80.2 percent penetration, per DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report. The audience is online. Only the collection layer went offline.
What to do before the designation resumes
- Ask which decision number authorises collection for the right you are claiming. If no decision exists, the invoice cannot exist either.
- Read writer income and recording income as separate lines. If your statements merge them, you cannot tell a national freeze from an unpaid distributor.
- Keep ISWC codes, ISRCs and split sheets current now. Any retroactive distribution will be rebuilt from registration data, and unmatched works are the first to fall out.
- Do not sign worldwide digital rights to a body whose licence stops at the border.
The commercial answer to this has been visible for a decade. Carla’s Dreams and Irina Rimes, both out of Chișinău, sit on Bucharest’s Global Records, which told Music Business Worldwide in March 2021 that it had paid out more than 30 million euros in royalties over the previous five years.
The lesson is not that talent leaves. It is that the rail those catalogues ride, a delivery contract rather than a state designation, kept paying through every month Moldova had no collector. More on the same structural problem in Georgia, in Armenia, and on the radio-heavy revenue mix next door in Romania.
