South Korea sets its streaming royalty split by government approval rather than negotiation, and the current rate card hands rightsholders 65 percent and the platform 35 percent.
DSP means digital service provider: in Korea, Melon, Genie, FLO, Bugs and VIBE, alongside Spotify and Apple Music operating locally.
The split lives in the music transmission usage fee collection regulation. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism approved the revision on 20 June 2018, effective 1 January 2019, lifting the rightsholder pool from 60 percent to 65.
The rate card, line by line
Inside that 65 percent, the shares are fixed by the same approval:
- Record producer, meaning the master owner: 48.25 percent
- Composers and lyricists: 10.5 percent
- Performers, meaning vocalists and session players: 6.25 percent
- Platform: 35 percent
Downloads were left at 70:30, set in 2015. The same approval killed the bundled-download discount, which had reached 65 percent, via adjustment coefficients of 1.2 in 2019, 1.6 in 2020 and 2.0 in 2021.
What one play is actually worth
Asia Business Daily put the domestic figure at roughly 7 won per play in a December 2025 report: about 2.5 won to the platform and 4.5 won to rightsholders. That works out at roughly 3.5 won to the producer, 0.7 won to the songwriter and 0.4 won to the performer. Composer Yoon Il-sang told the paper the creator share in Korea is smaller than in comparable overseas markets.
The pool is also divided pro rata rather than per user. As Park Ji-won reported for the Korea Times in March 2020, Melon and Genie split the 65 percent by each track’s share of total streams, so per-play value falls as the denominator grows. VIBE was the outlier that moved to a user-centric calculation.
Four societies, and your distributor belongs to none of them
The ministry approves the fee regulations of four music trust bodies together: the Recording Industry Association of Korea, the Federation of Korean Music Performers, KOMCA and KOSCAP.
Your distributor delivers the master and collects against the 48.25 percent line. The 10.5 and the 6.25 arrive from bodies your distributor is not a member of. For foreign rightsholders the writer share comes through your home society’s reciprocal deal with KOMCA, and the performer share through the performers’ federation. CMO means collective management organisation, the umbrella term for all four.
Choi Song-hee reported for Aju Business Daily in November 2025 that CISAC’s Global Collections Report 2025 ranked Korea 11th worldwide for 2024 on EUR 276 million, about KRW 465.3 billion. KOMCA accounted for roughly KRW 436.5 billion of that, about 94 percent of the national total. Digital transmission made up 48.1 percent of collections and grew 12.2 percent year on year. The same report flagged around KRW 150 billion still uncollected from OTT platforms and broadcasters.
The broadcast line is moving next
KOMCA opened a revision of its broadcast usage fee regulation in late 2025. Kwon Hye-mi reported for Electronic Times on 2 November 2025 that the proposal would rebase the fee on 100 percent of programme revenue, 90 percent of advertising revenue and 60 percent of programme sales revenue, with adjustment coefficients converging on 1.0. Programme providers called it a one-sided increase; estimates put potential rises near 2.5 times for IPTV operators.
What to do with this
Treat Korea as three revenue lines, not one. Master, writer and performer money arrives separately, on separate schedules, from separate bodies, and only one of those lines runs through your distributor.
Keep identifiers consistent. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, ISWC means International Standard Musical Work Code, and a master delivered with clean writer credits is what lets the publishing registration match downstream instead of pooling as black-box income.
Then ship to the domestic services. Melon, Genie, FLO, Bugs and VIBE are where the pro-rata pool is generated in the first place. A distributor that reaches only Spotify and Apple Music in Korea is delivering your catalogue into the smaller half of a rate card you cannot renegotiate.
Related reading: KOMCA: the Korea Music Copyright Association and K-pop royalties, explained, YouTube Music just passed Melon in Korea, and JASRAC paid 568,990 foreign creators last year.
