Japan Neighboring Rights: New Royalties for Performers

Japan has passed a major copyright reform. The new law extends neighboring rights to performers and labels when their recordings play in public venues. This expansion of Japan neighboring rights carries a fresh international scope. French artists heard in a Tokyo café will finally generate royalties. And Japanese artists played in France will receive their share too. This catch-up move by Japan on the 1961 Rome Convention opens a new revenue stream worth tracking for the whole global music ecosystem.

The context: a catch-up sixty years in the making

The 1961 Rome Convention set a clear principle. When a recorded track plays in a public space, the performers and the phonogram producers must collect a fee. This right, known as a “neighboring right” next to authors’ copyright, sits alongside the royalties paid to writers and composers. The two streams are independent. One rewards the writing. The other rewards the recording.

According to UNESCO, 142 countries now apply the framework. France implemented the Rome Convention through the 1985 Lang Act. Producer neighboring rights are collected by SCPP and SPPF. Performer rights run through ADAMI and SPEDIDAM. This four-society architecture is typical of France. Elsewhere in Europe, a single entity often handles everything, like PPL in the UK or GVL in Germany.

Japan, however, dragged its feet for more than sixty years. Its 1970 Copyright Act protected performers and labels only for broadcast plays. Not for public play in cafés, hotels or shops. Meanwhile, Japanese writers and composers collected fees properly through JASRAC, the local equivalent of SACEM (the French collective management society for music authors). The asymmetry was becoming awkward for the ecosystem. A session guitarist paid for ambient play in Paris received nothing when the same track aired in Osaka.

Why does Japan fix it now? Three reasons converge. J-pop now exports strongly, carried by YOASOBI and Fujii Kaze, who tour European and North American festivals. Japan’s economic partnership agreements with the EU and the UK explicitly called for discussions on this point. And the OECD kept flagging the last two holdouts: Japan and the United States. Tokyo moves at last. Washington remains stuck on AM/FM radio, which still pays performers and labels nothing.

The facts: what the new Japanese law actually says

The Diet passed the revision on June 17, 2026. The text creates a new right named the “record performance and communication right”. It applies to cafés, restaurants, hotels, shops, gyms and any commercial venue playing recorded music. The coverage is broad. It even includes shopping malls and sports complexes that pipe music through their spaces.

Collection will be entrusted to an entity designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. That body must publish a secondary-use fee schedule and negotiate with representatives of music users. JASRAC keeps handling authors’ rights in parallel. The two streams coexist, exactly as SACEM and SCPP do in France. The mechanism avoids administrative confusion while keeping billing simple for venues already paying JASRAC.

According to Music Business Worldwide, the fee schedule is not yet set. The law will take effect on a date determined by government order, within three years of promulgation. Japan’s Ministry of Education and Culture lists two goals. Feed revenues to artists and labels. And support the international expansion of Japanese music. The Cultural Council had been working the dossier since 2023, before the Cabinet approved the bill on May 15.

“This change brings Japanese artists further into the international fold.”
— Catherine Lovrics, partner, Marks & Clerk, via World Trademark Review

Analysis: what Japan neighboring rights change in practice

One word captures the main lever of the reform: reciprocity. Countries already applying the right had no obligation to pay Japanese performers. Tomorrow, they will. And the opposite becomes true too. French artists whose tracks play in a Shibuya izakaya will collect a slice of the fees collected. The reciprocity rule in private international law triggers the flow as soon as bilateral agreements are signed.

The financial impact will not be immediate. The fee schedule must still be set. The flows must be industrialized. The reciprocity agreements must be signed between the designated Japanese body and its foreign counterparts (SCPP, PPL, GVL, SoundExchange). Count twelve to thirty-six months before the first euro lands in a French performer’s account.

But the market is worth the wait. Japan is the world’s second-largest recorded music market. According to IFPI figures relayed by Music Business Worldwide, its music revenues bounced back by 8.9% in 2025. It is also the world’s top market for physical formats. CDs keep living an autonomous life there, inside a fan economy organized around collector objects and limited editions.

This particularity changes the picture for Japan neighboring rights. When a Tokyo café spins a record, it is often a physical vinyl or CD playback. When a Tower Records store sound-dresses its J-rock aisle, in-store plays are massive. The volume of public plays to monetize is probably higher than European observers imagine. No official figure is available yet. But comparisons with Germany or the UK hint at several tens of millions of euros per year in the Japanese pool. A fraction will flow back to foreign rightsholders through reciprocity agreements.

For French performers exported to Japan, the change is meaningful. Daft Punk, Air, Phoenix, Christine and the Queens, M83, FKJ: many catalogs play through tens of thousands of Japanese venues every day. Until now, zero royalty for the performers and labels involved. Tomorrow, an additional stream to factor into phonographic revenues. The US lag remains a persistent blind spot. Royalty arbitrages on the big DSP markets will not offset the missing neighboring right on US terrestrial radio.

The story is symmetric for Japanese performers and labels. They have watched Western markets pay performer rights for decades without seeing a cent on their own home turf. The new framework finally aligns Japan with the international standard. The trade-off is a fresh round of fee negotiations with venue trade groups. The prospect of recurring inflows from abroad makes that worthwhile for most rightsholders. Recent export wins by acts like YOASOBI and Fujii Kaze had already shifted the political math toward reform inside Tokyo’s policy circles.

Implications by profile: artists, labels, distributors

For the independent artist

If you are not yet registered with ADAMI or SPEDIDAM, do it now. These are the French societies that collect your performer neighboring rights. Without registration, no automatic payback can flow up from the Japanese body. Filing your catalog with the right ISRCs remains the absolute prerequisite, as IFPI reminds in its annual guides. Also keep your SACEM data up to date if you write songs, to benefit from the publishing side too.

For the independent label

The play here is membership in SCPP or SPPF. These two societies will sign the reciprocity agreements with the designated Japanese body. Verify the completeness of your metadata at your distributor. A missing ISRC or a mishandled producer credit at Believe, Idol or InGrooves breaks the payment chain. The situation echoes the recent music publishing deals on AI: clean data always beats a glossy promise. A catalog audit ahead of the Japanese rollout avoids multi-year holes later.

For the distributor or publisher

A service opportunity opens up on a three-year horizon. Advising rightsholders on Japanese filings, checking the inflows, challenging the rate schedules: that kind of support can become a commercial argument. Players already positioned on the Asian hi-res streaming markets will have a head start. Adding an “international royalties” line in client reporting is a strong sign of operational maturity.

Conclusion: a clear signal on internationalizing royalties

The Japanese reform is not an isolated event. It marks one more alignment with the international standard set in 1961. For French artists and labels, the schedule is clear. Prepare the house within three years. Verify your registrations with collective management societies. Audit the quality of your catalog metadata. Passive income tied to neighboring rights remains an underused component of the artist business model, especially on the independent side. Japan opens the path. The United States and its AM/FM radio keep their singular status.