{"id":15847,"date":"2026-08-08T13:06:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/papua-new-guinea-2-6-million-internet-users-no-music-royalty-society-biggest-hit-signed-london\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T13:08:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:08:45","slug":"papua-new-guinea-2-6-million-internet-users-no-music-royalty-society-biggest-hit-signed-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/papua-new-guinea-2-6-million-internet-users-no-music-royalty-society-biggest-hit-signed-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Papua New Guinea Has 2.6 Million Internet Users and No Music Royalty Society. Its Biggest Global Hit Was Signed in London."},"content":{"rendered":"

Papua New Guinea passed its Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act in 2000. Twenty-six years later, there is still no functioning body collecting performance royalties on behalf of PNG musicians.<\/p>\n

That is not a small gap. That is the entire publishing side of a national music economy.<\/p>\n

2.6 million people online, no collection rail<\/h2>\n

DataReportal’s Digital 2026: Papua New Guinea<\/a> report counts 2.60 million internet users at the end of 2025, or 24.1 percent penetration.<\/p>\n

Social media identities sat at 1.50 million in October 2025. Cellular connections ran to 5.21 million, 48.2 percent of the population.<\/p>\n

CMO means collective management organisation: the body that licenses radio, venues and broadcasters, then distributes what it collects to songwriters and performers. Kenya has one. Uganda has one. Papua New Guinea has a statute that contemplates one and no operating equivalent.<\/p>\n

Industry figures have said as much publicly for years. Business Advantage PNG<\/a> quoted musician and executive producer Allen Kedea saying the country has no performing rights association to collect royalties on artists’ behalf.<\/p>\n

Enforcement is worse than collection<\/h2>\n

The Act is administered by the Intellectual Property Office of Papua New Guinea. The US government’s own Country Commercial Guide for PNG<\/a> is blunt about what that administration produces. Protections against the reproduction and sale of counterfeit and pirated products, “particularly music and movies,” are described as insufficient, with such products “openly sold on the streets and in shops” and enforcement action characterised as sporadic.<\/p>\n

The amendment that moved was not about paying musicians<\/h2>\n

Legislative energy has gone elsewhere. Norton Rose Fulbright’s PNG practice analysed the Copyright Amendment Bill 2022<\/a> and found it concerned with accessible-format copies for people with disabilities, a worthwhile reform that is not a collecting society, a licensing body, or a royalty distribution mechanism. The firm also flagged constitutional property-rights concerns under Section 25.<\/p>\n

The broader copyright bill the music sector has asked for has meanwhile sat with the State Solicitor’s office awaiting a Certificate of Necessity.<\/p>\n

Port Moresby to London<\/h2>\n

PNG’s largest music export ran entirely outside all of this. Justin Wellington’s version of “Iko Iko,” featuring Solomon Islands group Small Jam, was recorded in 2017 and released on 3 June 2019 through Sony Music UK<\/a>. It went viral on TikTok in 2021, then went where the money was.<\/p>\n

The certification list is not a Pacific list. Diamond in France. Double platinum in Austria, Italy and Poland. Platinum in Denmark, Spain and Switzerland. Gold in Germany, Belgium, Portugal and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

None of it flowed through a PNG collecting society, because there is none. It moved on recording and publishing contracts signed offshore.<\/p>\n

What a PNG artist can actually build on in 2026<\/h2>\n