On 13 July 2026, the municipal council of Garabito voted five to zero to stop asking businesses for a music licence before it grants or renews a commercial patent. The change took effect the next day.
It will not be the last.
The licence comes from ACAM, the Asociación de Compositores y Autores Musicales de Costa Rica. A collective management organisation, or CMO, licenses a national songwriting repertoire in bulk and distributes the fees back to its members.
By 16 July, Delfino.cr counted removals in Garabito, Desamparados, Puriscal, Guácimo, Puntarenas, Montes de Oro, Tilarán, San Ramón and Monteverde, plus the Lepanto district council. Deputy José Miguel Villalobos put the running total near a dozen.
The politics behind the vote
Villalobos, of the Pueblo Soberano party, opened the fight on 17 June in the Legislative Assembly, saying he would spend his four-year term taking apart what he considers mismanagement in copyright collection.
ACAM president Arnoldo Castillo answered the next day. Copyright, he said, “no es un privilegio, no es un impuesto y no es una ocurrencia local,” per aDiarioCR. Not a privilege, not a tax, not a local invention.
ACAM’s statement on the municipal votes was sharper. Eliminating an administrative requirement does not eliminate the legal obligation behind it. Ley 6683, the copyright statute, still applies to a bar playing music whether or not the council asks for paperwork.
What is actually in the pool
ACAM board member and former president Edín Solís told La Nación the society distributed 225 million colones to 1,407 Costa Rican artists in 2025. In the same year, 1,314 million colones went to 123 foreign societies, and 250 million colones was assigned to the Social and Cultural Fund.
Roughly one colon in seven of the distributed rightsholder money stayed with a Costa Rican name. Before that split, 30 percent of collections covers ACAM’s operating costs and 10 percent funds social and cultural work.
That is not a scandal by itself. Foreign repertoire dominates what Costa Rican shops, gyms and radio actually play, and reciprocal agreements mean ACAM collects on it. But the fight moving through those councils is a fight over a domestic slice of about 225 million colones a year, split twice annually across roughly 5,000 registered members.
The rail no council can vote on
None of this touches recorded music on streaming.
Public performance income runs through the CMO. Recorded music on DSPs (digital service providers, meaning the streaming stores) runs through a distribution agreement signed release by release, reported monthly, and unaffected by whether Puriscal still requires a form.
Costa Rica has 4.78 million internet users at 92.6 percent penetration, per DataReportal’s Digital 2026: Costa Rica. The audience is already online. The money this fight is about is the one part of an artist’s income they cannot directly control.
What Costa Rican artists should do this cycle
- Register your compositions with ACAM anyway. Performance money only reaches writers whose works are actually on file.
- Keep recording distribution independent of the CMO cycle, so a municipal vote cannot interrupt streaming income.
- Confirm an ISRC (International Standard Recording Code, the unique identifier each recording carries) on every master before delivery.
- Lock writer, producer and featured-artist splits before release date, not after the first statement.
- Ask your distributor in writing which regional Latin American stores are in your delivery set, not just Spotify and Apple.
The export precedent
Debi Nova, from Escazú, is still the country’s clearest music export. She won a Latin Grammy in 2020 for Best Engineered Album for 3:33 and became the first Costa Rican nominated for a Grammy the year after, on Sony Music Latin.
That is the older route. The newer one does not require a major to sign you first, but it does require delivery and reporting that survive whatever the Assembly does to collective management next.
We have covered the same structural gap nearby. Ecuador’s authors’ society distributed 6.6 million dollars while its own members got 878,000, and Bolivia opened two audits into its royalty society after artists said they had never been paid a cent.
Costa Rica’s version is more orderly and better audited. The ratio at the end is not that different.
