{"id":15927,"date":"2026-08-08T18:09:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/uzbekistan-licenses-1100-singers-most-streamed-artist-pianist-signed-decca\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:11:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:11:48","slug":"uzbekistan-licenses-1100-singers-most-streamed-artist-pianist-signed-decca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/uzbekistan-licenses-1100-singers-most-streamed-artist-pianist-signed-decca\/","title":{"rendered":"Uzbekistan Licenses 1,100 Singers. Its Most-Streamed Artist Is a Pianist Signed to Decca."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Uzbekistan is one of the few countries where working as a professional singer requires a state licence.<\/p>\n<p>The licence is issued through Uzbekconcert, a State Unitary Enterprise. On 22 May 2025, the Ministry of Justice <a href=\"https:\/\/yuz.uz\/en\/news\/minyust-ispolniteli-narushivshie-avtorskie-prava-mogut-ostatsya-bez-litsenzii\">said it had referred 10 performers<\/a> to Uzbekconcert with a recommendation that their licences be cancelled, following complaints from poets and composers and administrative court rulings on copyright violations.<\/p>\n<p>The ministry called infringement by a licensed performer a gross violation of licensing requirements, and told rights holders to report cases through the 1008 helpline.<\/p>\n<p>A year later, the tax filings from that same licensed population arrived. They are small.<\/p>\n<h2>What 1,100 licensed singers declared<\/h2>\n<p>Between 1 January 2025 and 1 May 2026, 1,100 licensed singers filed income declarations with Uzbekistan&#8217;s Tax Committee, <a href=\"https:\/\/zamin.uz\/en\/uzbekistan\/198925-annual-income-of-singers-in-uzbekistan-disclosed.html\">reported by Zamin.uz<\/a> on 3 May 2026.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Total declared income: 6.478 billion soums. At the roughly 12,019 soums to the dollar quoted in early August 2026, that is about 539,000 dollars for the entire licensed profession over 16 months.<\/li>\n<li>Taxable portion: 5.1 billion soums. Income tax assessed: 599.7 million soums, due 1 June 2026.<\/li>\n<li>375 singers declared under 1 million soums. Another 576 declared between 1 and 10 million.<\/li>\n<li>Only 7 licensed artists declared more than 150 million soums for the year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Minister of Culture Ozodbek Nazarbekov told artists that one should be ashamed to suggest not paying taxes. A new taxation procedure for concert and entertainment activity has been proposed to take effect on 1 September 2026, three weeks from now.<\/p>\n<h2>The rail the licence does not touch<\/h2>\n<p>A Uzbekconcert licence governs performance activity. It is not a recording royalty system, and it does not deliver a track to a streaming service.<\/p>\n<p>Collective management sits elsewhere. SIIP, the Chamber for the Protection of Copyrights of Artists, Creators and Performers, was <a href=\"https:\/\/siip.uz\/eng\/about\">established on 28 January 2021<\/a>. Uzbekistan acceded to the Rome Convention on performers and phonogram producers in June 2024, per <a href=\"https:\/\/kostalegal.com\/newsletters\/uzbekistan-legal-newsletter-for-june-2024\">Kosta Legal<\/a>. The neighbouring rights framework is barely two years old.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify only reached Uzbekistan in February 2021, in the 80-market expansion <a href=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/uzbekistan\/spotify-expands-to-kyrgyzstan-and-uzbekistan\/\">covered by Novastan<\/a>. Before that, listeners used Apple Music, Deezer, Yandex Music and BOOM.<\/p>\n<h2>The export picture is thin, and it is classical<\/h2>\n<p>Music Metrics Vault <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicmetricsvault.com\/countries\/uzbekistan\/235\">tracks 22 Uzbek artists<\/a> on Spotify. The top of that list is not pop.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Eldar Nebolsin, pianist: about 179,000 monthly listeners.<\/li>\n<li>Dj Piligrim: about 177,000.<\/li>\n<li>Behzod Abduraimov, pianist: about 120,000.<\/li>\n<li>Sogdiana: about 88,000.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Abduraimov was born in Tashkent in 1990 and was signed by Decca Classics, a Universal Music company, after winning the London International Piano Competition in 2009. His catalogue money is collected in London, not Tashkent.<\/p>\n<p>Compare the neighbour. Kazakhstan&#8217;s biggest streaming act is Eternxlkz, the phonk producer Nurbek Myssiyev, at over 4 million monthly listeners. No performance licence created that. We covered how Kazakhstan <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/kazakhstan-changed-royalty-rules-twice-two-days-q-pop-publishing-money-state-platform\/\">routed its publishing money through a state platform<\/a>, and the same gap between domestic collection and export streaming runs through <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/mongolia-83-percent-internet-penetration-own-streaming-service-biggest-export-los-angeles\/\">Mongolia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>What Uzbek artists should do before 1 September<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Treat the licence and the recording as two separate assets. The licence lets you perform. It does not register or monetise the master.<\/li>\n<li>Get identifiers on every release. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the per-track ID that lets a DSP match a stream to a payee. UPC means Universal Product Code, the release-level equivalent.<\/li>\n<li>Deliver through a DDEX-native distributor. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard the major services ingest. Bad metadata is the most common reason Central Asian releases go unmatched.<\/li>\n<li>Cover the platforms that actually have Uzbek listeners: Yandex Music, Zvuk and VK Music alongside Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. Most Western-facing distributors ship only the second group.<\/li>\n<li>Keep the royalty statement separate from the tax declaration. Under the September procedure, one is evidence for the other, and a per-DSP breakdown is easier to defend than a lump sum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Uzbekistan measures its music industry by counting licences. That number tells you how many people are allowed to sing in a hall. It tells you nothing about who owns a master or where a stream pays out. For a country of 37 million with 22 tracked artists on Spotify, the second question is the one worth answering. Our <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/best-mcn-for-central-asian-artists-monetize-your-music-on-youtube-from-kazakhstan-uzbekistan-and-beyond-2026\/\">Central Asia YouTube monetisation guide<\/a> covers the adjacent piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uzbekistan music royalties run on a state performance licence: 1,100 licensed singers declared 6.478 billion soums over 16 months, about 539,000 dollars. Its most-streamed artists are classical pianists on Western labels. What Uzbek acts should fix before September.","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15929,"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":[505,24,36,1276,112,506],"class_list":["post-15927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-policy-legal","tag-central-asia","tag-music","tag-music-distribution","tag-music-royalties","tag-spotify","tag-uzbekistan","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>Uzbekistan Licenses 1,100 Singers. 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