Chile’s music royalty society, SCD, collected 25.9 billion pesos from streaming and digital platforms in 2025, but only 9 million pesos landed in the column that carries performer rights.
That gap is how Chilean law works today, and a bill called the Ley Tommy Rey is trying to change it. Here is the mechanism, and what it means for how you sign and register a Chilean recording.
What SCD’s 2025 Numbers Show
SCD means Sociedad Chilena del Derecho de Autor, the collecting society that licenses music use in Chile for songwriters and, separately, for performers. Its 2025 annual report, published in June 2026, splits every income line into author rights and related rights. Related rights (derechos conexos) belong to the people and companies on the recording, not the song.
- Total collected: CLP 51.65 billion.
- Digital platforms: CLP 25.89 billion, just over half of everything.
- Digital, related rights: CLP 8.99 million, about 0.03% of the digital line.
- Radio: CLP 803 million for authors, CLP 400 million in related rights.
On radio, TV, cinema and venue licences, the related-rights column runs at roughly half the author column. On streaming it is close to zero.
Why Streaming Skips the Performer
Under Chile’s Intellectual Property Law 17.336, performers already hold a collectively managed right to be paid when their recordings are broadcast or played in public. That is where the 400 million pesos on the radio line comes from.
On-demand streaming has no equivalent. Platforms pay songwriters through SCD and the master owner under its label or distributor licence. As La Tercera’s Cristóbal Palacios reported, platforms have so far paid only author rights. A performer who does not own the master earns whatever the recording contract says, and nothing more.
What the Ley Tommy Rey Would Change
The bill, Boletín 17.499-24, is named after cumbia singer Patricio Zúñiga, known as Tommy Rey, who died in March 2025. It passed the Chamber of Deputies on 3 November 2025, 124 votes to none in the article-by-article vote, and reached the Senate on 12 November 2025.
The three mechanics
- Presumed transfer, retained pay. A performer who signs a recording contract is presumed to have transferred the making-available right to the producer, but keeps an unwaivable, non-transferable right to equitable remuneration.
- The platform pays. Whoever makes the recording available owes the money, not the label.
- In-country reporting. On request, platforms must tell performers the monthly play count of each recording inside Chile.
The Senate culture committee opened its review on 11 May 2026 without a vote, according to a Parlamento.ai session summary. IFPI Chile and DiMA called it a label-artist split problem and pointed to Uruguay, where a similar law ended with a decree that sent the bill to the label.
Radio Already Has a Floor, and a Fresh-Release Slot
Law 20.810 of 2015 requires radio stations to play at least 20% Chilean music, and at least a quarter of that must be emerging work recorded in the last three years or regional material, as T13 summarised. SCD’s 2025 monitoring put the national average at 24.9%, but only 60.5% of stations met the minimum.
What to Do With a Chilean Catalogue Now
- Treat your master split as your only streaming income. Until the bill passes, a featured or session performer earns from Chilean streams only what the master agreement pays. Get that percentage in writing.
- Do not sign away statutory remuneration. Strike clauses that assign future equitable-remuneration rights to the label.
- Register as a performer with SCD. Related rights paid CLP 2.06 billion to Chilean artists in 2025. SCD monitors 423 stations through BMAT’s Vericast system, so fix your ISRCs. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the ID that ties a recording to its credited performers.
- Pitch radio inside the three-year window. A new release counts toward the emerging sub-quota; a 2019 single does not.
- Ask for Chile-level stream counts. Any claim under the new right would run on in-country plays.
That last point is a distributor question. InterSpace Distribution’s royalty reporting breaks earnings out by territory and platform, which is the evidence a Chilean performer claim would start from. For the wider market picture, see our breakdowns of Chile’s US$119.8 million recorded market and where Chilean Spotify money comes from.
