On 20 April 2026, Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property reopened public consultation on a draft Act that would, for the first time, put the country’s music royalty collectors under a licence.
DIP means Department of Intellectual Property, the Ministry of Commerce agency that runs copyright administration. CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses public use of songs and pays the writers behind them.
Collect royalties in Thailand without that licence and the draft carries up to three years in prison, a fine of up to THB 1 million, or both, according to Lexpertise’s summary of the bill.
What the draft Act sets up
- Two licence categories: copyright entrepreneurs, meaning rights holders who collect directly, and CMOs collecting for multiple rights holders. Both need DIP approval.
- Two-tier oversight: DIP officers on enforcement, a Supervisory Committee on policy and disputes, with appeals routed to Thailand’s specialised intellectual property court.
- Administrative penalties up to THB 500,000 plus daily fines, and licence revocation.
- An extended collective licensing mechanism for uses that involve many rights holders and many users at once.
- A 120-day transition window from the date the ministerial regulations take effect, for existing collectors to file.
Baker McKenzie’s note on the draft flags that ministerial regulation will set the covered categories of works, with music expected first.
Why Thailand is licensing collectors at all
Thailand has run a copyright agent designation system for years without a regulatory spine under it.
The Bangkok Post documented the result: restaurant owners squeezed over unlicensed playback, with one officer demanding 80,000 baht on the spot or a warrant for every shareholder.
DIP tightened its CMO certification conduct rules effective 26 December 2024, barring certified collectors from misrepresenting DIP authority or causing nuisance to music users. The draft Act turns that guidance into a statute with criminal teeth.
Music Copyright (Thailand) Ltd, founded in 1994, remains the only Thai society inside CISAC. Most of the abuse sat in the long tail of agents around it.
The money that never went through that door
Public performance is not where the bulk of Thai music revenue sits. The market runs roughly 92% on streaming, as we covered in Thailand’s 101 million dollar market and its JOOX discovery layer.
IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 put global recorded revenue at USD 31.7 billion for 2025, with Asia growing 10.9%. Thai catalogue is riding that curve through recordings, not through bar licences.
The capital agrees. Music Business Worldwide reported that Tencent and Tencent Music took 10% of GMM Music for USD 70 million, valuing it at USD 700 million, paid partly in cash and partly in a minority stake in JOOX Thailand. GMM Music has since filed to offer 228.8 million shares, about 26%, on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
None of that money moves through a CMO. It moves through recording rights, delivered by distributors to DSPs. DSP means digital service provider.
What a Thai artist or label should do this quarter
- If your income is bars, malls, radio and karaoke, this Act is your lane. Register works with MCT properly and keep writer splits current, because the chain is being rebuilt around documentation.
- If your income is streaming, this Act pays you nothing. Metadata does. One ISRC per recording, splits filed at delivery rather than reconstructed later.
- DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the messaging standard distributors use to hand DSPs your release metadata. Ask your distributor whether regional services get DDEX deliveries or a spreadsheet.
- Check catalogue reach beyond the global four. JOOX still carries discovery weight at home, and Thai acts export into KKBOX, NetEase Cloud Music and Vietnamese platforms.
- Track the ministerial regulations. The 120-day clock starts there, and self-administering catalogue owners may need a copyright entrepreneur licence themselves.
Thailand is fixing the smaller pot first, and it badly needed fixing. But a T-pop act with four export markets, of the kind we mapped in our piece on doubled T-pop listenership, gets paid on a rail the DIP does not touch. Filing splits correctly at delivery and reporting them back per DSP is the half of this job no ministerial regulation covers.
Both pots need to be clean. Only one is being cleaned this year.
