Saudi Arabia is retiring the copyright law it has used since 2003. On 12 August 2026, Royal Decree No. M/169 replaces it, and for the first time the Kingdom will have a statutory definition of what a performer and a record producer actually own.
That is eleven days away.
What Changes on August 12
Baker McKenzie’s July analysis sets out the mechanics. The decree was approved on 2 February 2026 and published in the Official Gazette on 13 February. The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, known as SAIP, had 180 days to issue the Implementing Regulation, which takes effect the same day as the law.
Two pieces matter for anyone releasing into the Gulf.
Neighbouring rights, for the first time
Neighbouring rights means the rights held by people who are not the songwriter: the performer on the recording, the company that produced the sound recording, and the broadcaster. Saudi Arabia has had no dedicated regime for these. It will on 12 August.
A legal basis for collecting the money
A collective management organisation, or CMO, licenses music in bulk to venues, broadcasters and businesses, then splits the proceeds back to rights holders. The new law creates the first statutory basis for CMOs in the Kingdom, with a separate governing regulation being co-drafted by the Ministry of Culture.
Enforcement also hardens. Criminal matters now run through the Public Prosecution rather than the old Violations Committee.
The Music Commission Asked for Exactly This
None of it arrived unannounced. On 30 September 2025 the Saudi Music Commission published Foundations for Success, a study by the economist Will Page.
Its projection: recorded music revenues of USD 500 million within ten years, putting Saudi Arabia among the world’s top 20 markets by 2034, the year the Kingdom hosts the World Cup. The route there is paid subscriptions, converting 25 million music consumers into 8.7 to 10 million subscriptions via telecom and family plans.
One core recommendation was to build a collective rights organisation with SAIP. Ten months later, the law does it. Commission CEO Paul Pacifico called the study “a quantified plan to turn listening into livelihoods.”
The UAE got there first, approving EMRA and Music Nation in June 2025.
The Number That Explains the Urgency
Spotify published its first Loud and Clear report for Saudi Arabia last year. Saudi artists generated SR13 million, roughly USD 3.5 million, in royalties across 2024.
That is up 76% year on year and more than double the 2022 figure. It is also, in absolute terms, tiny.
More than 90% of it came from listeners outside Saudi Arabia, per Arab News. First-time listeners discovered Saudi artists 220 million times in 2024, and consumption is up nearly 200% since 2020.
Demand for Saudi music is scaling fast and mostly offshore, while the domestic money a CMO collects, from venues, broadcast and public performance, has had no legal plumbing at all. Regional growth is not the constraint: IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 put Middle East and North Africa revenues up 15.2% in 2025, streaming at 97.5% of the total.
The Recording Side Still Runs Through Anghami
Anghami reported FY2025 revenue of USD 99.3 million, up 27%, with more than 3.5 million paid subscribers across Anghami and OSN+ and 130 million registered users.
Note what that figure now contains. After the OSN+ integration, Anghami is a bundled music and video business, which changes how subscription revenue is apportioned before it reaches a recording.
It is still where Gulf listening habits live, built on repertoire deals with Rotana and other regional labels. Whether your catalogue reaches it depends on your distributor’s delivery list, and Anghami is not on all of them.
What to Fix Before the Regulation Lands
- Credit performers properly in delivery metadata, with names and roles. Neighbouring rights attach to people, not to a release ID.
- Supply Arabic script and Latin transliteration for artist and track names, so Gulf editorial teams and search can surface you.
- Document recording and composition rights separately, with splits agreed in writing before release.
- Confirm your distributor delivers to Anghami, not just Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
- Watch for SAIP’s Implementing Regulation on 12 August, then the Ministry of Culture’s CMO regulation.
DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard DSPs use to ingest releases. Performer credit fields already exist inside it, and on most independent releases they are left blank. That was defensible in a market with no neighbouring rights. It gets expensive in one that just built them.
Further reading: MENA growth and the Anghami gap, Morocco’s rap money on Spotify, and the Dominican Republic royalty split fight.
