SoundExchange and Music Nation Copyrights Management (MusicNation) announced a reciprocal agreement on September 17, 2026, enabling cross-border neighboring rights administration between the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The arrangement creates a route for participating artists and rights owners to collect royalties when their recordings are played in the other market.
Royalty collection across borders
The agreement extends an existing partnership under which SoundExchange supplies technology, data and industry expertise to support MusicNation’s neighboring rights administration in the UAE.
Michael Huppe, SoundExchange’s President and CEO, said the arrangement would provide revenue for its artists and rights owners whose music is played in the UAE, while enabling compensation for Emirati creators whose music is played in the United States.
“It also enables SoundExchange to seamlessly provide these services for some of its partner CMOs around the world, who have the option of collecting UAE royalties through their existing agreements with SoundExchange.”
MusicNation was established as a collective management organization (CMO) to administer compensation for local and international performers, record labels, songwriters, publishers and other rights holders. Its remit covers commercial uses of their works in the UAE and, through reciprocal arrangements, other markets.
MusicNation’s licensing infrastructure
Alongside its partnership with BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), MusicNation’s work with SoundExchange supports licensing, royalty collection and distribution across three categories:
- Neighboring rights for sound recordings.
- Public performance rights for musical compositions.
- Mechanical reproduction rights for musical compositions.
MusicNation licenses rights belonging to authors, publishers, sound recording owners and performers throughout the UAE. Its infrastructure is intended to support the country’s protection and enforcement of musical copyrights.
Rasha Khalifa Al Mubarak, MusicNation’s Chairwoman, linked the agreement to the UAE’s development and attraction of foreign investment into its creative economy. She said rights management systems should protect musical intellectual property and ensure compensation for artists and rights holders to global standards.
MusicNation CEO Amer M. Samhoun said the agreement would give international CMOs and rights partners a means of working with the organization through its UAE rights administration system.
SoundExchange’s international network
The agreement adds the UAE to SoundExchange’s worldwide collection network. The organization, described as the world’s largest neighboring rights organization, has more than 100 agreements with CMOs covering 93% of the available global neighboring rights market.
Nearly 600,000 artists and rights owners use SoundExchange to collect worldwide royalties on their behalf. Separately, the organization says it has collected and distributed more than $13 billion in digital performance royalties for more than 800,000 music creators to date.
SoundExchange is the sole organization designated by the US government to administer the Section 114 sound recording license. It collects and distributes digital performance royalties from services including Pandora, SiriusXM and iHeartRadio, as well as thousands of other platforms, and collects available international performance royalties through its global partnerships.
