Argentina stripped SADAIC of its statutory monopoly over music royalty collection in February 2025, and eighteen months later the state registry that replaced it lists six collective management societies, every one of them an incumbent.
CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses public performance of music and pays out what it collects to writers, performers or labels.
What the decrees actually did
Decreto 138/2025, published in the Boletín Oficial on 27 February 2025, ended the rule that authors and performers could only collect through state-authorised societies.
A week later DNU 150/2025 rewrote Decreto 5146/69, the 1969 rule that implemented Ley 17.648 and made SADAIC the compulsory channel. As Abogados.com.ar reads the amended text, SADAIC is now only “facultada para ejercer la gestión colectiva” for authors who hand it a mandate.
Three things carried into the new regime:
- Transitional tariffs held at 20 percent for ticketed events, 15 percent for other events, and 10 percent for broadcasts, recordings and publications, across a 180-day window.
- An auditor seated at the Ministry of Justice with a four-year mandate to verify how income reaches members.
- Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger framed the package as restitution of property rights: artists can use SADAIC only if they want to.
The registry is six names long and none of them are new
The Dirección Nacional del Derecho de Autor publishes the register of authorised entities. It currently reads:
- No. 1 ARGENTORES and No. 2 SADAIC, both entered de oficio under Disposición 2/2025.
- No. 3 CAPIF, the recorded music chamber, under Disposición 1/2026.
- No. 4 CADRA, reprographic rights, under Disposición 3/2026.
- No. 5 SAGAI, screen performers, under Disposición 4/2026.
- No. 6 AADI, the performers’ association, under Disposición 5/2026.
Look at entries three and six. CAPIF and AADI have collected neighbouring rights jointly for decades through AADI CAPIF Asociación Civil Recaudadora, and they now hold separate registrations under separate dispositions.
Eighteen months of legal open competition has so far produced no challenger society for music. What it produced was paperwork for the societies that were already there.
The courts have not settled it
Federal Administrative Court No. 7, under Judge Enrique Lavié Pico, rejected SADAIC’s injunction on 18 March 2025 against Decreto 765/24 and Resolución Conjunta 2/24, finding the society had not demonstrated urgency even while accepting that collections could fall.
Página/12 reported on 28 February 2025 that SADAIC, ARGENTORES, AADI and the independent musicians’ union all moved against the package. The constitutional question is still live.
The money went somewhere the decree does not reach
Spotify’s Loud and Clear figures for Argentina, reported by Belén Escobar at Bloomberg Línea on 12 June 2026, put 2025 royalties to Argentine artists above ARS 110 billion, up 55 percent year on year.
Two-thirds of that came from listeners outside Argentina. Around 300 Argentine artists cleared ARS 50 million each, and close to two-thirds of the total went to independent artists and labels.
That is recording revenue. It is paid to whoever controls the master and it reaches the artist through a distributor, not through any of the six societies on the registry.
What this means for an Argentine release in 2026
- Deregulation made SADAIC optional, not unnecessary. Direct licensing only pays if you can invoice, monitor and chase venues yourself.
- Neighbouring rights claims may now need attention at two doors rather than one, because CAPIF and AADI sit on the registry separately.
- Keep the writer side and the master side on separate ledgers. The decrees touched the first and left the second alone.
- With two-thirds of the money arriving from abroad, splits and contributor credits have to be right at delivery, not corrected after the first statement.
ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the per-recording identifier every streaming service reconciles payments against. Argentine acts exporting at this rate need ISRC-level, territory-level statements they can read without hiring a lawyer, and that is the part of the stack a distributor either gets right or does not.
Related reading: Argentina’s most-streamed genre is now cumbia, but the export money still runs through trap, Uruguay nearly lost Spotify over a royalty law, and Bolivia opened two audits into its music royalty society.
