Norway’s songwriter society TONO took in NOK 1.11 billion in 2025, up 9.1 percent, yet paid its own members NOK 335 million, down from NOK 374.8 million a year earlier. Foreign writers and publishers received NOK 379.8 million. The gap has one main cause: TONO stopped moving money between royalty pools.
That rule change is not only a Norwegian story. It is the direction most European collecting societies are heading, and it decides whose songs get paid from which pot.
What changed in TONO’s distribution model
A distribution model is the rulebook a collecting society uses to turn licence income into payments per song. TONO’s old model topped up some areas with money earned elsewhere. The new one, announced on 2 September 2025, ends that:
- Only concert income pays concert royalties, only radio income pays radio royalties, and so on.
- Background music money from shops and gyms is now split on a representative sample of what is actually played, instead of topping up concert and NRK broadcast payments.
- The first-performance scheme and a subsidised pool, both funded by transfers from other areas, were discontinued, according to TONO’s 2025 annual and transparency report.
- The board scrapped a planned 2025 to 2028 transition and applied the model from the September 2025 payout.
TONO’s 11 May 2026 results release says the model more directly reflects what Norwegians actually listen to, which sends more money abroad. Part of the dip is timing: some 2025 background-music funds will be paid on the new basis in 2026.
Where Norwegian members’ money actually came from
The report’s member breakdown shows streaming is now the core of a Norwegian songwriter’s income:
- Online: NOK 118.8 million, about 35 percent of the NOK 335 million paid to members.
- Concerts and live events: NOK 66.0 million.
- Radio: NOK 32.4 million. TV: NOK 13.9 million.
- Royalties collected abroad and passed through: NOK 79.4 million.
The spread is wide. TONO paid 33,975 members an average of NOK 9,861. Its 5,801 voting members averaged NOK 43,563; the other 28,174 averaged NOK 2,922. TONO’s overall cost percentage was 14.47 percent, per its 2025 key figures.
The streaming licence moved in January
Until the end of 2025, TONO’s Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and YouTube deals ran through Polaris Hub, a Nordic venture with Koda and Teosto. From 1 January 2026, ICE Core, owned by PRS for Music, GEMA and STIM, licenses those services for TONO, as Music Ally’s Stuart Dredge reported. CEO Karl Vestli cited “the opportunity to deliver faster payouts.” TONO’s report says more frequent payouts will come “over time.”
The model is still contested. Writers’ group Populærkomponistene sought an external investigation of TONO’s 2021 to 2025 distributions, Ballade reported on 19 August 2026. About a third of attendees at the 1 September extraordinary meeting backed it, above the 10 percent legal threshold, so members can now ask Oslo District Court to order it.
What to do with your own catalogue
Assume every pool stands alone
Under use-matched rules, a song earns only in the areas where it is logged. If your music lives on streaming rather than radio or stages, your composition income will track streams, and nothing from other pools will top it up.
Register works before they are used
TONO holds money it cannot match to a documented work for up to three years before its annual meeting decides what happens to it. Register every split at release, not after the first statement.
Know the floors and clocks
- TONO carries over payments below its annual NOK 250 threshold.
- Norway’s Collective Management Act requires distribution within nine months of the end of the calendar year.
- Your distributor pays the master side of a Spotify stream. The composition side reaches Norwegian writers through ICE Core and TONO, and only if the work is registered.
Those are two separate royalty streams with two separate statements, and both depend on the same metadata. For how other Nordic markets handle the same split, see our breakdowns of Teosto’s 2025 streaming payouts and Sweden’s offshore songwriting money, plus Hungary’s Artisjus distribution. InterSpace Distribution delivers ISRCs and writer credits in DDEX-native metadata so the master and composition sides line up from day one.
