{"id":20054,"date":"2026-09-12T08:12:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T08:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/timor-leste-pays-royalties-us-dollars-no-office-register-collecting-society\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T08:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T08:14:07","slug":"timor-leste-pays-royalties-us-dollars-no-office-register-collecting-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/timor-leste-pays-royalties-us-dollars-no-office-register-collecting-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Timor-Leste Pays Royalties in US Dollars. It Has No Office to Register a Collecting Society With."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Timor-Leste pays music royalties in US dollars, because the US dollar is its official currency, which makes it the one market in Southeast Asia where a streaming payout lands without a currency conversion. Almost everything else in its rights infrastructure is unfinished.<\/p>\n<p>The country became the World Trade Organization&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wto.org\/english\/news_e\/news24_e\/acc_30aug24_e.htm\">166th member on 30 August 2024<\/a>, and ASEAN&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/asean.org\/forging-a-new-era-timor-leste-admitted-into-asean\/\">11th member on 26 October 2025<\/a>. Its copyright statute was written before either.<\/p>\n<h2>The code exists. The office does not.<\/h2>\n<p>The National Parliament approved Law No. 14\/2022, the Copyright and Related Rights Code, on 29 November 2022, as Lisbon IP firm <a href=\"https:\/\/inventa.com\/pt\/noticias\/artigo\/817\/timor-leste-aprovado-o-primeiro-codigo-dos-direitos-de-autor-e-direitos-conexos\">Inventa reported that December<\/a>. Article 176 gave it 180 days from publication.<\/p>\n<p>It runs to 176 articles covering authorship, related rights, contracts and collective management. The WTO hosts the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wto.org\/english\/thewto_e\/acc_e\/tls_e\/wtacctls27_leg_3.pdf\">unofficial English translation<\/a> in its accession file.<\/p>\n<p>What does not exist is the institution the code keeps pointing at. Writing for KASS International in November 2025, Alvin Boey noted Timor-Leste <a href=\"https:\/\/kass.asia\/timor-leste-a-new-dawn-for-patents-and-ip-in-aseans-youngest-member\/\">has no IP office accepting or examining applications<\/a>, with one still being built alongside WIPO.<\/p>\n<h2>Fifty years, not seventy<\/h2>\n<p>Article 119 sets the general term at 50 years after the creator&#8217;s death. Article 146 puts related rights, meaning performers, phonogram producers and broadcasters, at 50 years from the performance, first fixation or first broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>That is the treaty floor, twenty years shorter than the life-plus-70 term in Indonesia next door. Model a Timorese catalogue on a 50-year clock at home and a longer one in most export markets.<\/p>\n<h2>Article 116 lets a foreign society collect for you<\/h2>\n<p>CMO means collective management organisation, the body licensing public performance and broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>Article 116(2) says that &#8220;national or foreign associations and organisms&#8221; formed to manage authors&#8217; rights act as representatives of rightsholders, and that the representation results from &#8220;the simple fact of being a member or adherent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The statute does not require a Timorese society. A Dili songwriter who joins a foreign one is, on the face of the law, represented.<\/p>\n<p>Article 117 attaches the catch: representation &#8220;depends on the registration with the State entity that supervises copyrights.&#8221; That entity is the part not yet standing.<\/p>\n<h2>The dollar is the quiet advantage<\/h2>\n<p>Timor-Leste has used the US dollar since 2000, and the IMF gave a 2024 Selected Issues Paper to the question, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elibrary.imf.org\/view\/journals\/018\/2024\/042\/article-A001-en.xml\">How Has Dollarization Served Timor-Leste So Far?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For a distributor that removes the friction dominating frontier-market payouts elsewhere. No FX spread, no central bank remittance queue, no conversion step between the DSP and the artist. DSP means digital service provider.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify has been live there since its <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.spotify.com\/2021-02-22\/spotify-expands-international-footprint-bringing-audio-to-80-new-markets\/\">February 2021 expansion<\/a>, with Timor-Leste on the published market list. Recorded-side money already moves. The performance-side pipe is missing, much as in <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/laos-only-asean-country-no-collecting-society-biggest-artist-320000-spotify-listeners\/\">Laos<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>What 1 January 2027 actually changes<\/h2>\n<p>The WTO&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wto.org\/english\/news_e\/news24_e\/acc_26feb24_tls_e.pdf\">accession package summary<\/a> states that full implementation of TRIPS &#8220;will start no later than 1 January 2027,&#8221; with Articles 3, 4 and 5 applying from the accession date. TRIPS means Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.<\/p>\n<p>Those three are national treatment and most-favoured-nation. Timor-Leste is not a Berne Convention party, a point the <a href=\"https:\/\/intellectualpropertyrightsoffice.org\/Timor-Leste\">Intellectual Property Rights Office states plainly<\/a>. WTO membership, not Berne, is what gives a Timorese rightsholder standing across the other member economies today.<\/p>\n<p>Four things to do before the deadline.<\/p>\n<h3>Treat recorded income as the whole business for now<\/h3>\n<p>Master and publishing royalties through a distributor and a publishing administrator are the only streams reliably collectable this year.<\/p>\n<h3>Join a foreign society rather than waiting for a local one<\/h3>\n<p>Article 116(2) contemplates exactly that. A wait for a domestic CMO is open-ended, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/maldives-182-resorts-no-music-licensing-body-copyright-act-pay-producer-directly\/\">Maldives has shown<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Publish and register in a Berne country<\/h3>\n<p>Protection abroad turns on where a work is published and who administers it, not on a Timorese registry that has yet to open.<\/p>\n<h3>Document splits at source<\/h3>\n<p>When the supervising entity exists, Article 117 will ask for proof of representation. Retro-fitting that across a back catalogue is the expensive version.<\/p>\n<p>A distributor serving this market should deliver in DDEX form, pay in dollars without a conversion leg, and show splits line by line in its royalty reporting. For now, that statement is the only royalty accounting a Timorese artist has.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timor-Leste joined ASEAN in October 2025 and owes full TRIPS implementation by 1 January 2027. Its 2022 Copyright Code already lets a foreign collecting society represent local writers, but the office that registers them does not exist yet. What artists and labels should do now.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20055,"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":[46090,503,341,497,112,46088],"class_list":["post-20054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-policy-legal","tag-asean","tag-copyright","tag-royalties","tag-southeast-asia","tag-spotify","tag-timor-leste","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>Timor-Leste Pays Royalties in US Dollars. 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