MÜST (Music Copyright Society of Chinese Taipei)

MÜST (Music Copyright Society of Chinese Taipei) is a non-profit collective management organization founded on January 20, 1999, in Taiwan. It licenses the public performance, public broadcast, and public transmission of musical works on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers, collecting royalties from businesses and platforms that use music and distributing them to rightsholders.

How MÜST Works

MÜST operates under Taiwan's Copyright Collective Management Organization Act and is regulated by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). As the sole active CISAC member for music copyright in Taiwan, MÜST maintains bilateral reciprocal agreements with CISAC sister societies worldwide. Through these agreements, MÜST administers over 82 million musical works globally and manages approximately 280,000 domestic works.

MÜST collects royalties from several sources:

• Radio and television broadcasters pay license fees based on revenue percentages set by TIPO
• Streaming platforms (such as KKBOX and Spotify) pay based on revenue share multiplied by MÜST's usage ratio on the platform
• Live performance venues and concert organizers pay per-event license fees
• Businesses using background music (restaurants, retail stores, gyms) pay annual blanket licenses
• Digital platforms including YouTube, Meta, and TikTok pay for public transmission rights

The organization charges a 7% management fee on collected royalties, meaning 93% of collected revenue is distributed to members. MÜST's board consists of seven writer directors and six publisher directors, elected at the General Meeting. The current 11th session was elected in 2025 with a tenure running from 2026 to 2028, chaired by WU, I-Wei.

As of April 2026, MÜST has 2,761 members, up from 1,012 a decade earlier. Public transmission (digital and online use) now accounts for approximately 52% of total revenue, reflecting a shift from traditional media to digital platforms.

In 2024, MÜST collected NT$785,168,608 in total royalty revenue, up from NT$718,254,271 in 2023. In May 2025, TIPO ruled that MÜST's newly established OTT audiovisual streaming royalty rates overlapped with existing 2012 rates and ordered them deleted. TIPO also set the streaming platform royalty rate at 2.75% of revenue (up from the previous 2.5%), rejecting MÜST's proposed increase to 8%.

Real-World Example

A Taiwanese songwriter joins MÜST and registers 30 compositions. One of those songs is played 200,000 times on KKBOX in a given quarter and receives regular airplay on a Taipei radio station. KKBOX reports usage data to MÜST, and the radio station submits its playlist logs.

MÜST matches the usage data against registered works and calculates the songwriter's share. If KKBOX pays NT$10 million in royalties to MÜST for the quarter and the songwriter's works account for 0.5% of total MÜST-managed usage on the platform, the songwriter receives a proportional share. With the 7% management fee deducted, NT$4,650 would be allocated to the songwriter from KKBOX alone (before publisher share deductions).

If the same song is played on radio in Japan, MÜST's reciprocal agreement with JASRAC means JASRAC collects those royalties and remits them to MÜST, which distributes them to the songwriter in the next international distribution cycle.

Why It Matters for Independent Artists

If you are a songwriter, composer, or publisher based in Taiwan, MÜST is the primary organization that collects performance and transmission royalties for your musical works. Without MÜST membership, you earn zero performance royalties from radio play, streaming, public performance, or digital transmission of your music in Taiwan.

Join MÜST and register your works before they are publicly released. Unregistered works generate no royalties, even if they accumulate millions of streams. Submit accurate metadata including ISRC codes, ISWC numbers, and split sheets to ensure MÜST's matching system correctly attributes usage to your catalog.

If your music is played internationally, MÜST's reciprocal agreements with foreign societies mean those royalties flow back to you. However, you must register your works with MÜST first for the matching process to work. Register a publishing entity if you want to collect the publisher's share in addition to the writer's share.

MÜST also operates a public welfare fund, allocating a portion of management fees to support music education and cultural development in Taiwan.

Related Resources

• Performing Rights Organizations (PRO) - What a PRO is and how it functions
• Performance Royalties - How performance royalties are generated and collected
• Mechanical Royalties - How mechanical royalties differ from performance royalties
• Collective Management Organization (CMO) - How CMOs operate globally
• MÜST Official Website - Visit MÜST for membership and licensing information
• Use our Streaming Royalty Calculator to estimate your digital earnings