Eastern Caribbean music royalties from bars, hotels and restaurants are paid out against radio logs and sampled live events, not what those venues actually play.
That rule, set out in the ECCO FAQ, now decides who shares a growing pot. The society’s distribution for 2025 usage, scheduled for 23 September 2026, is worth more than EC$1.7 million, The Voice reported. At the fixed rate of EC$2.70 to the US dollar, that is roughly US$630,000.
ECCO means the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights. It is the collective management organisation, or CMO, that licenses the song side of music, the composition rather than the recording, across six OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) territories: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The numbers, from ECCO’s own filings
- Collected in 2025: EC$2,030,954.67, just under 2024’s EC$2,067,459.78 and more than triple the EC$591,894 of 2020.
- Administrative deductions: 36%, down from 44% in 2024.
- Members: 959 at year end. Only 22 joined in 2025, and 15 of them were from Saint Lucia.
- Received from sister societies abroad: EC$144,837, up from EC$45,796.
All four figures come from the 2025 annual report, whose financial statements Grant Thornton signed off on 21 May 2026.
How ECCO decides whose song was used
The society draws on three data sources, according to its FAQ and its monitoring page:
- Radio and TV: BMAT’s Vericast audio fingerprinting. A track is only monitored once an MP3 of it has been submitted to the ECCO office. ECCO paid EC$26,762 in BMAT fees in 2025.
- Major events: at Saint Lucia Jazz, Dominica’s World Creole Music Festival and the carnivals, ECCO sends agents to log the songs performed first hand.
- Everything else: bar, hotel and nightclub licence money is distributed against radio data and a sample of small live events.
The consequence is blunt. A song that fills a Castries bar every weekend but never reached a fingerprinted station, or was never submitted as an MP3, has no data line to be paid against.
The local share moves with the data
Three payouts in 15 months show the effect:
- July 2025: EC$1,044,083.85 for 2023 usage, with 44% to ECCO members and 56% to foreign societies, per The Voice.
- December 2025: EC$1.3 million for 2024, with 52% to members. ECCO credited “enhanced data collection from local live events,” The Voice reported.
- September 2026: over EC$1.7 million for 2025, with 55% to members.
The lag is shrinking too. Money reached bank accounts about 18 months after the 2023 usage year closed, then 11 months, then nine. Chairman Bruno Leonce ties that to ECCO’s move to WIPO Connect, the collective-management software the World Intellectual Property Organization supplies to societies, first used for the 2024 distribution.
Unmatched money does not wait forever. Royalties for unregistered works are held in trust, ECCO said in November 2025, and after three years unclaimed they are reallocated to registered members and societies with documented usage.
What an OECS writer should file before the next cycle
- Join: a one-time EC$150 fee for writers and EC$450 for publishers, with no annual dues, per ECCO’s membership page.
- Register every work before release, with writer splits agreed in writing. Unclaimed money is reallocated after three years whether or not you knew it was there.
- Submit an MP3 of every release so Vericast can recognise it on air.
- Get your setlist to ECCO’s agent when you play carnival or a major festival. Live data is what lifted the local share.
- Check the US route. ECCO lists the MLC among its affiliates, and its 2025 payout included MLC income. That is one route by which US streaming mechanicals reach an OECS writer.
Matching works best when the same ISRC, writer credits and splits travel unchanged from delivery to BMAT, ECCO and the MLC. That metadata is set once, at distribution, which is the part of the chain InterSpace Distribution handles. The society registration is still yours to file.
Related reading: how Barbados wired COSCAP into US royalty pipes, Trinidad and Tobago’s 70-year copyright term, and why Jamaica pays performers nothing for radio airplay.
