Thailand’s songwriter royalty pool grew far faster than the region’s recorded music market in 2025, but that is not the same as saying Thai writers received a comparable pay rise. Music Copyright (Thailand) Ltd. (MCT) reports that its total royalty collections increased 71.9% year on year and its domestic digital collections increased 97.6%. Its next line is labelled “distributable royalties”, meaning money available for allocation after collection costs, not a list of what reached individual bank accounts. A distributor assessing Thai catalogue value needs to keep those three stages, collection, allocation and payment, separate. The figures appear in MCT’s 2025 annual report, listed on its site as updated on 2 November 2026.
MCT collected THB794.6 million (approximately US$23.45 million) in 2025, against THB462.1 million (approximately US$13.64 million) in 2024, according to the annual report’s operational performance table. The dollar equivalents use exchangerate.dev’s 13 November 2026 reference of THB33.884 per US dollar; they are comparisons, not the conversion rate at which the royalties were settled. This is a songwriter society’s collection measure. It covers the rights MCT administers in musical works. It should not be added to, or presented as a subset of, a recording distributor’s streaming statement without checking what each statement includes.
The digital line is doing most of the work
Domestic digital use produced THB591.4 million (approximately US$17.45 million) of MCT’s 2025 collections, or 74.4% of the total, the society reports. That line was THB299.3 million (approximately US$8.83 million) in 2024. MCT’s domestic digital category therefore accounts for most of the reported increase in its collection base. It is also a much larger category than the society’s international concert, general licensing or overseas lines in the same table. The report does not publish platform level rates in this summary, so the rise cannot safely be assigned to a particular streaming service, a higher per stream price or a sudden change in listening behaviour.
The distinction matters when a label in Lagos, Nairobi or Accra sees Thai consumption in its analytics. A recording can generate a payment on the master side through delivery to the stores, while the underlying composition creates a separate claim for its writers and publishers. MCT says in its annual report that it manages public performance and reproduction rights in musical works for its songwriter members. Its guide to rights explicitly distinguishes the musical work from the sound recording. For a cross border release, the practical question is whether the song’s ownership, writers and shares can be identified when Thai usage is reported. A stream count alone does not answer it.
There is independent evidence that the surrounding market grew, but it measures another ledger. IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 puts 2025 growth across Southeast Asian recorded music markets at 9.3%. IFPI’s regional measure is recorded music revenue, while MCT’s 71.9% is a change in this Thai society’s collections of composition royalties. The figures can sit beside each other as context, but their gap is not proof that songwriters gained more than recording owners, or that Thai streaming payouts rose at the same rate. Different rights, territories, reporting periods and collection histories can move those series differently.
Available for distribution is a narrower claim than paid
MCT identifies THB730.8 million (approximately US$21.57 million) as distributable royalties for 2025, equal to 92.0% of its collection total in the annual report. The table shows THB416.0 million (approximately US$12.28 million) for 2024, so this available pool also increased. The report’s summary does not establish that every baht in the newer pool was paid to a writer during 2025, nor does it identify every final recipient. It distinguishes money collected, collection expenses and the amount available for distribution. Treating that last number as cash received by members would erase the central accounting question.
The society’s stated timetable helps frame the question. MCT says its royalties are allocated quarterly, in March, June, September and December, and adds that distribution depends on music usage reports from commercial establishments. Its report also names usage reports and audiovisual cue sheets among the factors affecting a writer’s payment. An accurate income forecast therefore needs the use period and payment period, the kind of licensee, and the status of the underlying usage report. A 2025 collection number by itself has none of those recipient level details.
Another useful separation is inside the digital category. MCT lists domestic digital collections separately from digital overseas collections in its 2025 table. It also lists overseas collections from other uses. These labels describe where money entered MCT’s reporting system; they are not a map of every foreign listener’s payment to a Thai writer. A distributor serving an African rights holder should reconcile the territory on the statement with the society or publisher that administers the composition. It should not assume that every Thai listen will appear in MCT’s overseas line merely because the writer lives outside Thailand.
What to ask before pricing the catalogue
A useful Thai revenue file should contain a recording identifier for the master, a musical work identifier where one exists, the writer and publisher shares, and the party responsible for collecting each right. MCT’s annual report explains the separate roles of International Standard Recording Codes for recordings, International Standard Musical Work Codes for compositions, and Interested Party Information numbers for writers and publishers. These identifiers do not create a royalty on their own. They give the parties who receive usage data a better chance of matching it to a claim.
For an existing catalogue, the immediate audit is a reconciliation exercise. Select tracks with material Thai activity. Compare the master statement with the composition registration and any society or publisher statement. Check spelling, alternate titles, writer splits and the date on which each work entered the collecting system. Then note which quarter each usage period should flow into and ask for a reason where a line is missing. This is an operational response to MCT’s own description of the data on which it depends, not a promise that registration will recover every historical use.
There is a second question for valuation: how much of the reported growth is repeatable? MCT’s 2025 figures show a much larger domestic digital collection base, but the annual summary does not isolate the effects of new licensing, arrears, repertoire growth, changes in reporting, or consumption. Those possibilities cannot be assigned a value from this document. A buyer should request a multi-year sequence of actual receipts by right and use type before applying a growth multiple to the catalogue. A seller should be equally careful about presenting society collections as proof of earnings for a specific work.
This angle differs from our recent Thailand coverage of unmatched song royalties and master rights. The newly updated MCT report provides a view of the songwriter society’s 2025 intake and its accounting categories. Its most useful lesson is precise: Thai composition collections, especially domestic digital collections, expanded rapidly in MCT’s books. The report does not tell us how much a particular songwriter was paid. That missing bridge, from a growing pool through matched usage to an identified claimant, is where a distributor’s rights work begins.
