Brazil pays a recording’s share of radio and TV royalties only when ECAD can match its ISRC, and a distributor-issued code counts only from an approved list.
That list had 69 entries when the association Abramus last updated it on 17 August 2026. If your distributor is not on it, the recording side of your Brazilian airplay goes uncollected.
How ECAD splits the money
ECAD means Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição, the office that collects public performance royalties for Brazil’s seven music associations. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the identifier for a single recording.
Under Article 21 of ECAD’s distribution regulation, revised 10 December 2025:
- 66.67 percent of recorded-music money goes to the song’s authors and publishers.
- 33.33 percent goes to direitos conexos, Brazil’s neighbouring rights.
- Live shows pay authors only. There is no recording share.
The phonogram rules then split the neighbouring-rights third:
- 41.7 percent to the interpreter, the featured artist.
- 41.7 percent to the phonogram producer, the master owner.
- 16.6 percent to the músico executante, the session or backing musician.
Radio, TV, cinema and background music carry that split. For streaming, Article 47 leaves the neighbouring-rights share to each platform’s contract with ECAD.
ECAD distributed R$1.7 billion to more than 345,000 rights holders in 2025.
The distributor ISRC rule
A Brazilian recording used to need an ISRC with a Brazilian country prefix, generated through an association. Aggregator codes were long called “ISRC fake,” the association Assim notes.
On 1 July 2022, ECAD’s registration system began accepting distributor-generated ISRCs for Brazilian recordings, picked from a predefined list. Article 9 of the current regulation makes that binding: an aggregator ISRC is valid only if the aggregator is homologated, meaning approved by ECAD.
Abramus publishes the list. It includes DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, ONErpm, Believe, Symphonic, Amuse and Tratore. Abramus’s September 2026 ISRC guide adds two warnings:
- If the distributor is not homologated, there is no neighbouring-rights collection on that registration.
- Even on the list, nothing is automatic. You type the code into the association portal yourself.
The session musician line
Since 9 July 2021, every new Brazilian recording must name at least one musician, registered with a CPF tax number, Tratore’s David Dines reported. Skip it and ECAD attaches an “unidentified musician” field and holds the 16.6 percent.
Three clauses decide where that money ends up:
- A producer who plays every part on a keyboard or computer gets one musician share, not several.
- If a pending registration is later matched to a recording with no musician listed, the held money returns to the radio or TV pool it came from.
- Unmatched credits expire five years after 1 January of the year following distribution. They are paid out to identified holders in March and June.
The current revision also asks whether generative AI was used, fully or partly, and on which elements. The November 2024 version had no such field.
What to do before your next Brazilian release
- Join an association as a phonogram producer. The seven are Abramus, Amar, Assim, Sbacem, Sicam, Socinpro and UBC. Your featured artist and musicians must each be affiliated to collect.
- Generate the ISRC there first. Abramus issues codes free to affiliated producers and recommends using that code at your distributor.
- If your distributor issued the code, check the list. Not on it? Abramus can request homologation, but the distributor must supply the documents.
- File the full credits. Every interpreter and every musician, each with a CPF.
- Check for held money. ECAD updates its retained-credits list monthly. Ask your association to run your recordings against it.
The song side is a separate claim, covered in our breakdown of Brazil’s 12 percent songwriter split. For the quarterly lag, see how ECAD pays streaming. Chile shows what an unclaimed performer line looks like: 25.9 billion pesos collected, 9 million to performers.
Ask your distributor two questions: is it on ECAD’s list, and will it deliver an ISRC you supply unchanged? DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard DSPs ingest, and it is how InterSpace Distribution carries codes and credits to every store.
