Croatia’s songwriter society, HDS ZAMP, collected EUR 5.9 million from concerts in 2025, more than it took from every streaming, video and social platform combined, and EUR 400,189 of its live money still has no owner because promoters never filed the setlists. Both figures are in the society’s Summary Annual Report 2025.
A CMO means a collective management organisation: the body that licenses venues, broadcasters and platforms for the composition, then pays the writers. HDS ZAMP is Croatia’s, representing around 13,000 member authors and rights holders plus more than 150,000 foreign authors.
Where the EUR 32.7 million came from
Total 2025 collections were EUR 32,716,208, up 13 percent. The biggest lines:
- Concerts: EUR 5.91 million, up 18 percent
- HoReCa (hotels, restaurants and cafés): EUR 5.60 million
- Television: EUR 5.10 million
- Online music and video-on-demand: EUR 4.77 million, part of a digital total of EUR 4.88 million that grew 53 percent
- Radio: EUR 3.05 million
- Revenue from abroad: EUR 1.85 million
Inside that digital line, on-demand audio streaming (Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music) was about EUR 1.5 million. User-generated content platforms such as YouTube and TikTok brought another 1.5 million, and Netflix-style video services 1.8 million. Audio streaming is under 5 percent of what the society collects.
Why concert money is the best-paid line
Most income lines lose a management cost plus a deduction of up to 10 percent for the HDS Cultural Fund. Concerts skip the cultural deduction.
- Concerts: 16.77 percent cost, no cultural deduction, 83.23 percent reaches writers
- Online and VoD platforms: 72.19 percent reaches writers
- HoReCa: 68.31 percent reaches writers
Concert money is also the most precisely targeted. HDS ZAMP’s distribution rules pay concert royalties to the authors whose works were performed at each specific show. Hospitality money sits in a general pool paid against sampled radio and TV playlists, because a café cannot report what it played.
The practical reading: a bar in Split playing your song earns you almost nothing unless radio does too. A 400-capacity show where you play ten of your own songs pays you directly, if the paperwork arrives.
The EUR 400,189 nobody can pay
The report states that EUR 400,189.16 from concerts and live events went unallocated in 2025 because organisers had not delivered programmes and setlists by 31 December. The society says it keeps chasing the data and will distribute the money in later periods.
The obligation sits with the promoter, not the artist. HDS ZAMP’s concert licensing page sets a legal deadline of 14 days after the show, and says a completed form header plus the performers’ setlist is usually enough. With 46,915 live events logged in 2025, including 11,477 pop concerts, small shows are exactly where the setlist goes missing.
What to do before your next Croatian date
- Register every work first. Direct members registered 13,988 new works in 2025. An unregistered song on a setlist is far harder to match.
- Send the setlist yourself. Email it to the promoter the night of the show and keep a copy.
- Foreign writers: check your home society. Croatian concert money reaches you through reciprocal agreements, so your works need to be registered at home with correct splits.
The regional money is the export market
Of the EUR 1.85 million Croatian authors earned abroad, the top payers were neighbours: Slovenia’s SAZAS (EUR 493,000), Serbia’s SOKOJ (EUR 440,000), Montenegro’s PAM CG (EUR 166,000) and Bosnia’s AMUS (EUR 123,000), all ahead of Germany’s GEMA at EUR 114,000. Outbound, HDS ZAMP sent EUR 915,000 to the UK’s PRS and roughly EUR 600,000 each to ASCAP, BMI and SOKOJ.
For a Croatian writer, the ex-Yugoslav circuit is the real export market. The pattern echoes what we found in Serbia after EXIT and in Albania’s royalty agency.
The master side is separate. Streaming income for your recordings flows through your distributor, and clean songwriter metadata at delivery helps a CMO match the composition later. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the standard format for that metadata; InterSpace Distribution delivers DDEX-native with transparent splits, but the setlist is still yours to send. For comparison, see how unregistered songs fare in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
