The UAE’s Ministry of Economy and Tourism has launched its Collective Management in Music Guide, establishing a framework for the collective licensing and management of music rights in the UAE. From December 2026, the associated tariff structure will take effect for commercial music use across a range of sectors.
For years, the UAE has had a legal framework recognising copyright and related rights in music. The more difficult question has been practical: how can those rights be licensed efficiently across thousands of businesses using music, and how can royalties reach creators and other rights holders?
The UAE is now putting that infrastructure in place.
Much of the immediate attention will understandably be on what businesses will pay. But the tariffs are only part of the story. The more significant development is the creation of a functioning collective management system for music. For artists, composers, performers, producers and publishers, this creates a practical route for licensing rights and collecting and distributing royalties. For businesses using music, it provides a more organised route to obtaining the permissions they need.
It is an important next step in the UAE's evolving copyright and creative economy landscape.
A single song can involve rights belonging to songwriters, composers, performers, publishers and sound recording producers. Those rights may then be engaged every day across hotels, restaurants, cafés, shopping malls, gyms, broadcasters, airlines, concerts and other venues. It would be impractical for each rights holder to negotiate individually with every business using their music. It would be equally unrealistic for a hotel, restaurant or broadcaster to locate and negotiate separately with every rights holder behind every piece of music it uses.
This is the problem collective management is intended to solve.
Collective Management Organizations or CMOs, manage rights on behalf of rights holders. In broad terms, they provide licences for music use, collect the corresponding royalties and distribute those royalties to the rights holders they represent.
The Ministry has authorized two organizations to undertake collective management activities in the UAE music sector; the Emirates Music Rights Association (EMRA) and Music Nation.
The new Guide is part of the UAE's wider development of collective rights management. Collective management is already recognized under the UAE's copyright framework, and the establishment of the Emirates Reprographic Rights Management Association (ERRA) was an earlier development in the collective administration of rights for authors and publishers. The introduction of an operational framework for music rights marks an important further step in that journey.
One particularly positive aspect of the development of the music framework has been the Ministry of Economy and Tourism's engagement with the wider IP and business community. The Ministry encouraged engagement with businesses and rights holders, allowing those who would ultimately interact with the system to contribute their perspectives.
Those discussions provided an opportunity to consider the framework from different sides of the market, including rights holders, commercial users of music and the IP practitioners supporting them.
It is therefore encouraging to see the framework move into its implementation phase. More broadly, the process is a good example of the UAE's collaborative approach to developing its IP ecosystem, bringing together government, rights holders, businesses and practitioners as the country's creative industries continue to grow.
From the beginning of December 2026, the tariff framework will apply to specified commercial uses of music.
The Guide covers a broad range of businesses and activities, including restaurants and cafés, hotels, shopping malls, fitness centres, airlines, radio and television broadcasters, concerts and similar events.
There are also exclusions and exemptions for certain uses under the framework.
For businesses, this means music should increasingly be treated as an IP licensing issue rather than simply part of the atmosphere of a venue or customer experience. Businesses using protected music commercially will need to understand whether their activities fall within the framework, what licence is required and what this means for their operations and budgets.
But there is another side to the equation. For rights holders, the important word is royalties.
A copyright law can give a creator an economic right. That does not, by itself, ensure that the creator is paid every time a work is commercially used. That is why the collective management infrastructure matters.
Instead of individual creators having to identify and pursue potentially thousands of uses of their music, authorized CMOs can manage licensing and royalty collection collectively and distribute the resulting amounts to the relevant rights holders.
The framework also places collective management activities under Ministry supervision, including requirements around compliance, governance, transparency and the collection and distribution of royalties. The Ministry has also established mechanisms for complaints from rights holders, users and other concerned parties.
The development is not simply about introducing a new fee for businesses. It is about creating an ecosystem around music rights: licensing, collection, distribution, oversight and ultimately remuneration.
December is not far away, and businesses that use music commercially should start by understanding how they use it.
For some, that exercise will be relatively straightforward. For larger hospitality, retail, entertainment or leisure groups, the position may be more complex. Music may be used differently across hotels, restaurants, gyms, retail areas, events and other parts of the business.
Businesses should therefore consider mapping their music use across their UAE operations, identifying which activities fall within the new framework and assessing the relevant licensing categories and likely costs.
For rights holders, this is also a good time to understand how the new collective management structure may apply to their repertoire and rights, and how royalties generated through commercial use in the UAE will be administered.
It would be easy to view the new framework simply as the introduction of music licensing fees. Its significance, however, goes much further.The framework represents another step in the UAE’s continued evolution of its IP and creative economy, moving beyond the recognition and protection of rights towards practical systems that allow those rights to be managed, licensed and commercialised effectively.
As the UAE continues to grow as a regional and international hub for creativity, entertainment and innovation, frameworks such as this will play an increasingly important role in creating an environment that works for creators, rights holders and businesses alike.
The real measure of success will now be how the framework develops in practice. This is an important milestone, but also the beginning of the next chapter for collective management of music rights in the UAE.
