{"id":15827,"date":"2026-08-08T12:07:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/uae-first-music-licence-rate-card-most-streamed-artist-2025-drake\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:09:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:09:02","slug":"uae-first-music-licence-rate-card-most-streamed-artist-2025-drake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/uae-first-music-licence-rate-card-most-streamed-artist-2025-drake\/","title":{"rendered":"The UAE Approved Its First Music Licence Rate Card. Its Most-Streamed Artist of 2025 Was Drake."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 1 December 2026, playing music in a Dubai cafe stops being free.<\/p>\n<p>That is the date the United Arab Emirates&#8217; approved music licensing rate card takes effect, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dlapiper.com\/en-gl\/insights\/publications\/2026\/07\/uae-introduces-new-music-licensing-regime\">20 July 2026 note from DLA Piper<\/a>. Restaurants, hotels, retail outlets, gyms and broadcasters all fall inside it.<\/p>\n<p>It is the first time the Gulf&#8217;s biggest music consumption market has had a working public performance rail. It is also not where most UAE music money actually moves.<\/p>\n<h2>What the rate card covers<\/h2>\n<p>The regime is administered by two licensed societies rather than one national monopoly. Businesses can already apply, individually or as a group, ahead of the December deadline.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>In scope:<\/strong> restaurants and cafes, hotels, retail, gyms, television and radio broadcasting.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fee drivers:<\/strong> business type, venue size and how the music is used. Live performances and DJ sets sit above background music.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exempt:<\/strong> government entities, educational institutions, non-commercial charitable events.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Live date:<\/strong> annual licensing fees apply from 1 December 2026.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For scale, the Ministry of Economy and Tourism&#8217;s own <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moet.gov.ae\/en\/-\/ministry-of-economy-awards-second-collective-music-management-license-to-music-nation-\">June 2025 announcement<\/a> put 350 live music venues in Dubai alone.<\/p>\n<h2>Two societies, eighteen months old<\/h2>\n<p>A CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses music to venues and broadcasters in bulk and then splits the money back to writers, publishers and performers.<\/p>\n<p>The UAE had none until recently. The Emirates Music Rights Association, EMRA, took the country&#8217;s first collective management licence in April 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/emirates-music-rights-association-emra-granted-first-collective-management-license-in-the-uae\/\">reported by Music Business Worldwide<\/a>. Music Nation for Rights Management followed on 2 June 2025 under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2021, and has <a href=\"https:\/\/insightplus.bakermckenzie.com\/bm\/intellectual-property\/united-arab-emirates-music-licensing-update-second-collective-management-organization-approved\">partnered with BMI and SoundExchange<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The international plumbing arrived in February. Sacem <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/sacem-secures-landmark-agreement-with-uae-based-cmo-the-emirates-music-rights-association-emra\/\">signed a representation agreement with EMRA on 25 February 2026<\/a>, with a framework covering both authors&#8217; and neighbouring rights built alongside IFPI and PPL. Sacem&#8217;s release also noted that cultural and creative industries contributed 3.5 percent of UAE GDP in 2022, about 54.4 billion dirhams.<\/p>\n<p>The timing is regional, not accidental. Saudi Arabia&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/saudi-arabia-first-neighbouring-rights-law-august-12-artists-made-3-5-million-on-spotify\/\">first neighbouring rights law took effect this month<\/a>, and the Gulf is rebuilding its rights infrastructure in the same eighteen-month window.<\/p>\n<h2>The pot the rate card does not touch<\/h2>\n<p>Here is the gap. A venue licence collects for public performance. It does not collect the streaming royalty, which is where the growth is.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/global-recorded-music-revenues-hit-31-7bn-in-2025-up-6-4-yoy-users-of-paid-music-subscriptions-reach-837m\/\">IFPI Global Music Report 2026<\/a> put global recorded revenue at 31.7 billion dollars in 2025, up 6.4 percent. The Middle East and North Africa grew 15.2 percent, joint second-fastest of any region, and streaming made up 97.5 percent of the regional total.<\/p>\n<p>Who receives that money in the UAE is the awkward part. Spotify&#8217;s 2025 Wrapped for the market, <a href=\"https:\/\/campaignme.com\/spotify-wrapped-2025-how-the-region-listened\/\">summarised by Campaign Middle East<\/a>, had Drake as the country&#8217;s most-streamed artist, &#8220;Die With A Smile&#8221; as the top song and Billie Eilish&#8217;s album on top. The leading Arabic track was Sabah Mahmod&#8217;s &#8220;Aftini.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Every one of those payouts leaves the country through label and distributor accounting, not through a Dubai venue licence.<\/p>\n<h2>What a UAE artist should do before December<\/h2>\n<p>The two rails pay for different things, and you need both switched on.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>If you write:<\/strong> register your works with a licensed society so the venue and broadcast pot has a name attached to it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>If you record:<\/strong> your streaming income comes from delivery, so keep ISRC and UPC codes, contributor credits and split percentages accurate at upload.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cover the regional stores:<\/strong> Anghami, now <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/anghami-built-in-beirut-taken-private-abu-dhabi-lebanon-artists-payout-problem\/\">being taken private out of Abu Dhabi<\/a>, still carries Gulf listening that global-only delivery lists skip.<\/li>\n<li><strong>If you run a venue:<\/strong> apply now, group licences exist, and audits have already started.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mark Abou Jaoude, Spotify&#8217;s head of music for the region, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenationalnews.com\/arts-culture\/music-stage\/2026\/01\/23\/spotify-arabic-music-trends-2026\/\">The National in January<\/a> that 77 percent of discovery streams in the region went to emerging artists rather than established acts, and that artists no longer feel they have to sound international to travel.<\/p>\n<p>That is a distribution problem before it is a licensing one. InterSpace Distribution delivers on DDEX, Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard DSPs read, and reports splits at track level so a Gulf release is not waiting on a rate card to get paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UAE music licensing starts charging on 1 December 2026, when EMRA&#8217;s approved rate card reaches hotels, cafes, gyms and broadcasters. Yet the UAE&#8217;s most-streamed artist of 2025 was Drake, and recording money still lands through distribution, not through the country&#8217;s two new collective societies.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[518],"tags":[2492,309,24,341,112,399],"class_list":["post-15827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-policy-legal","tag-anghami","tag-middle-east","tag-music","tag-royalties","tag-spotify","tag-uae","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The UAE Approved Its First Music Licence Rate Card. 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