Japan has created a music right that will, for the first time, require performers and record companies to be paid when their recordings are played in public spaces such as cafes, shops, hotels, and gyms.
The country’s parliament enacted a revised Copyright Act on Wednesday (June 17), introducing what the government calls the record performance and communication right.
Until now, only songwriters, composers, and music publishers were paid when commercially released music was played as background music in Japanese venues.
The performers and the labels behind those recordings received nothing for the public plays, at home or overseas.
Japan‘s copyright framework separates authors’ rights, held by songwriters and composers, from neighboring rights, held by performers and record producers.
The new measure adds a payment right for the neighboring-rights holders when a commercial recording is played or transmitted in a public setting.
It runs alongside the authors’ right, whose background music royalties are collected in Japan by JASRAC, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers.
Japan‘s 1970 Copyright Act had given performers and labels a fee only when their recordings were used in broadcasting, not when they were played in public venues.
Songwriters and composers, by contrast, have collected background music royalties in Japan since 2002.
The reform is meant to channel money to artists and labels and to support the overseas growth of Japanese music, according to the education and culture ministry.
The ministry said the system had been widely adopted abroad but left undeveloped in Japan, so Japanese artists earned nothing when their songs were used commercially in other countries.
Under the new framework, a body designated by the Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs will collect the fees and distribute them to rightsholders.
That body must draw up and publish a schedule of secondary-use fees, and must enter talks with representatives of music users when asked.
If the two sides cannot agree, either can apply to the Commissioner for a ruling.
The level of the new secondary-use fees has not been set.
The right traces back to the Rome Convention of 1961, which provides for a single equitable payment to performers and record producers when commercial recordings are broadcast or communicated to the public.
Japan had not done so; the United States, which has never ratified the convention, similarly provides no such right.
The government says the right has already been introduced in 142 countries, and that among OECD members only Japan and the United States had not adopted it.
The United States remains the other holdout, where terrestrial AM/FM radio still pays nothing to performers and labels for the recordings it broadcasts.
Because countries apply the right reciprocally, nations that grant it have not had to pay Japanese performers and labels when Japanese recordings are played in their bars, shops and restaurants.
Japan is the world’s second-largest recorded music market and its biggest market for physical formats, according to IFPI figures reported by MBW.
Its recorded music revenues returned to growth in 2025, rising 8.9% YoY, as acts including YOASOBI and Fujii Kaze have built audiences outside Japan.
The protection of record performance had also featured in Japan‘s economic partnership agreements with the European Union and the United Kingdom, in which the parties agreed to keep discussing it.
Catherine Lovrics, a partner at intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk, said the change brings Japanese artists “further into the international fold,” in comments to World Trademark Review.
The reform has been years in the making.
Japan‘s Cultural Council had examined the right since 2023, before the Cabinet approved the bill on May 15.
The House of Councillors then passed it on Wednesday (June 17), completing its passage through the Diet.
The revised law will take effect on a date set by government order within three years of its promulgation, giving the designated body and music users time to agree fee levels before collection begins.Music Business Worldwide
