Estonia’s authors’ society, EAÜ, paid 5,326,127 euros to foreign collecting societies in 2025 and received about 437,665 euros from them, according to its audited annual report. For every euro Estonian songwriters earned abroad through the society system, roughly twelve left the country.
That ratio is not a scandal. It is what a small market that mostly plays imported songs looks like on a balance sheet, and it shows where an Estonian writer’s leverage is.
The numbers, from EAÜ’s own filings
EAÜ means Eesti Autorite Ühing, the Estonian Authors’ Society. It is the collective management organisation, or CMO, that licenses the composition side of music in Estonia: the song, not the recording.
- Collected in 2025: 11,971,631 euros in net licence fees, up 10.73% on 2024.
- Recording, digital and online: 1,901,461 euros, narrowly behind live performance at 1,953,970 euros.
- Paid to member music authors: 2,799,214 euros, 43,699 euros less than in 2024.
- Paid to foreign societies: 5,326,127 euros, up 1,393,074 euros.
- Still owed abroad at year end: 6,013,652 euros, scheduled for payment in 2026.
The society closed the year with 6,523 members, 5,995 of them music authors, per the 2025 annual report signed off on 28 April 2026.
Where the money goes, and where it comes from
EAÜ’s 2024 transparency report breaks the flows down by country. Sweden took the largest share of outbound payments at 914,920 euros (23.26%), followed by the UK at 795,844, the US at 670,934 and Denmark at 499,144.
Inbound, EAÜ received 405,557 euros gross in 2024. The US was the largest source at 72,970 euros, but Latvia came second at 60,369, ahead of Spain, Finland and the UK. The neighbour across the border paid Estonian writers more than Britain did.
The cheapest euro an Estonian writer earns
EAÜ’s administration fee, the vahendustasu, varies by income stream. In 2024 it kept 10,139 euros on the foreign line, about 2.5% of what arrived. On recording, digital and online income it kept 280,578 euros, roughly 17% of the 1,648,697 euros collected.
Foreign money has already been cut once by the paying society before it reaches Tallinn, so the light second deduction matters. The problem with foreign income is volume, not cost.
What to do with this
Register before you release
A foreign society can only pay for a work it can match. EAÜ’s 2025 plan was to move all outbound distribution files to CRD, the Common Royalty Distribution format societies use to exchange payment data. Complete splits and co-writer details at registration are what make the return leg work.
Know what you signed over
Joining EAÜ assigns all of your works; you cannot pick and choose songs. You can, however, limit the rights categories and the territories the society represents. Carving out a territory only pays if a publisher or administrator there collects faster, and for less than the 2.5% EAÜ adds on top of the local society’s cut.
Declare foreign income yourself
EAÜ withholds income tax on royalties collected in Estonia. Royalties it collects abroad are yours to declare to the Tax and Customs Board, and the 2025 return window ran from 16 February to 30 April 2026, EAÜ reminded members. The author portal can now push foreign music income straight into the pre-filled declaration.
The recording side is a separate pipe
None of these figures include master royalties. The recording share of a Spotify or Apple Music stream reaches an Estonian artist through their distributor or label, not through EAÜ. A self-releasing artist who writes their own songs earns on both pipes and should audit both: the distributor statement for the master, the EAÜ portal for the song.
For comparison, read Koda’s unmatched Spotify residuals and Teosto’s 93-euro median payment and, closer to home, Lithuania’s LATGA economics.
The two pipes only meet in metadata. Writer credits delivered with the release are what let a society connect a stream in Riga or Stockholm to a work registered in Tallinn, which is why songwriter credits belong in the delivery, not in a follow-up email.
