Vietnam’s cafes, karaoke rooms and hotel lobbies started paying for their background music on 1 July. Government Decree No. 134/2026/ND-CP is now in force, and it replaces negotiation with a formula.
The annual fee multiplies a statutory base salary, which rose to VND2.53 million a month on the same date, by a coefficient tied to venue type and floor area.
What Decree 134 actually charges
CMO means Collective Management Organisation, the body licensed to collect public performance money on behalf of rights holders. Vietnam has two in play here.
- Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City pay 100% of the standard rate. Type-1 urban centres pay 80%, type-2 pay 50%, type-3 pay 20%, and remote or mountainous areas pay 10%.
- A 30 square metre cafe in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City lands at roughly VND2.4 million a year, according to Viet Nam News.
- There is an annual ceiling of VND20 million regardless of how big the venue gets.
- Covered categories include beverage shops, restaurants, conference venues, karaoke bars, hotels, tourist accommodation and entertainment parks.
- The Vietnam Centre for Protection of Music Copyright (VCPMC) collects for composers and songwriters. The Recording Industry Association of Vietnam (RIAV) collects for producers and performers.
The money was already at a record before the decree landed
VCPMC collected VND424 billion in 2025, about USD 16 million and an 8% year-on-year rise, per Saigon Giai Phong.
- The northern region contributed VND211.4 billion, the southern branch VND212.8 billion.
- Performance and live entertainment collections grew 202% year on year.
- VCPMC distributed close to VND269 billion to rights holders, up 5% on 2024.
- Its authorised author network reached 7,207 writers.
That is the point worth sitting with. The fastest-growing royalty line in Vietnam last year was not streaming. It was people playing music in rooms.
Indonesia is fixing the same gap from the other end
Minister of Law Regulation No. 27 of 2025, issued on 7 August 2025, implements Government Regulation 56 of 2021 and puts the payment obligation squarely on event organisers and business owners, as Rajah & Tann Asia sets out. It names streaming, downloads, webcasts, video on demand and live event streaming as commercial digital uses.
Several digital tariffs remain undetermined, which is why the system still feels unfinished on the ground. Writing in The Jakarta Post in July, Randy Levin Virgiawan called Indonesia’s royalty framework “painfully manual, opaque and overly centralized,” and singled out promoters who pay performers but ignore the songwriter debt owed through LMKN.
ASEAN is starting to standardise the plumbing
Indonesia hosted the first ASEAN CMO Forum in Bali on 10 April 2026, themed Collaborative Strategic Dialogue on Digital Royalty. The Directorate General of Intellectual Property reported four agreements: a regional position on AI and music copyright, standing coordination between CMOs and governments, minimum standards for digital royalty reporting and distribution, and the forum itself as a permanent consultative mechanism.
Jakarta is pushing a draft instrument on digital royalty governance toward the 48th session of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, and has asked WIPO, CISAC and IFPI for global standards, ANTARA reported.
What an indie artist or label should do this quarter
- Register with the CMO in every market where your music is played publicly. Your distributor does not collect performance money for you, and no DSP payout includes it.
- Keep composition credits and recording credits separate in your metadata. Vietnam splits collection between VCPMC and RIAV on exactly that line.
- Check that your ISWC, the composition identifier, exists and is registered, not just your ISRC.
- If you license to a Southeast Asian brand, venue chain or drama soundtrack, treat the performance licence as a second revenue line, not an afterthought.
The recording side is what a distributor delivers, and getting that side clean across Zing MP3, NhacCuaTui and the platforms that actually carry Vietnamese listening is still where most catalogues leak money. InterSpace Distribution delivers DDEX-native, which means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard that keeps writer and performer credits intact all the way to the DSP and, increasingly, to the CMO reading the same file.
Related reading: Top Music Distribution Platforms for Vietnamese Artists and Indonesian Music Now Owns 78% of Its Own Spotify Charts.
