Four organisations collect four kinds of money. Almost nobody is signed up to all of them.
This is where the uncollected money on this island actually is. The failures are independent: being registered with one of these tells you nothing about the other five.
BEING A MEMBER IS NOT THE SAME AS THAT SOCIETY COLLECTING HERE, and the difference decides what you should expect. Islanders DO join Buma/Stemra, and that is the right move — it is how you collect what your music earns ABROAD. But Curaçao appears nowhere on Buma/Stemra's own published list of sister societies, the ordinance creates no collective-management structure at all, and the nearest court to rule found no legal basis for collection in the neighbouring island. So do not assume your membership is collecting for plays on THIS island. Ask the society which territories your membership covers — one question settles it, and nobody has published the answer.
No collecting society for Curaçao appears in CISAC's public member directory. Ducapro launched in 2018 for four islands, with a SOCAN back-office arrangement announced that year — whether that arrangement still stands has not been confirmed since. Its website currently shows only a holding page.
In June 2026 a court in ARUBA dismissed a Ducapro claim for music-use fees against a radio station and ordered Ducapro to pay costs. The court held that ARUBA has no sufficient statutory structure for calculating, collecting and distributing copyright royalties, and that a landsverordening would be needed to create one (Gerecht in Eerste Aanleg van Aruba, 10 June 2026, ECLI:NL:OGEAA:2026:160).That was an Aruban court applying ARUBAN law — the judgment says “op Aruba” throughout, and Aruba has its own ordinance. It does not settle Curaçao's position and should not be quoted as though it does. No Curaçao court has ruled on the question.
There is also no official Curaçao singles or album chart that we could find — a radio station countdown is not an industry chart — and no gold or platinum certification body — around eighty jurisdictions have one, and no Dutch Caribbean territory appears on any of those lists.
So a record can be the biggest thing on this island and be officially invisible. No collection, no chart, no certificate means no royalty, no data, no leverage, and nothing to show a foreign buyer who asks how big you really are.
A song doing well on Spotify in America is paying you only part of what it earns. The PERFORMANCE side reaches you — ASCAP or BMI collect it and pay it across to your society. The MECHANICAL side of every US stream is a substantial share and it is not being collected at all unless somebody registered your works with the MLC. It is not lost; it sits there unmatched. But nobody is claiming it for you.
(Anyone who tells you it is a neat 50/50 is guessing — the two sides are set by completely different processes, and the mechanical side is probably the larger of the two.)
ISWC identifies the SONG.It is issued by CISAC, not by your society — your society is the intake channel that registers the work, and CISAC assigns the code. You cannot request one from CISAC directly. Missing, and song money cannot be tied back to the work across territories.
IPI identifies YOU as a writer, composer or publisher. Missing, and the money is collected but cannot be routed to a human being.
IPN identifies you as a PERFORMER on a record, administered by SCAPR. Missing, and neighbouring-rights money never finds the player who earned it.
They fail independently, which is exactly why writers who did register with a society still find money missing.
Before anyone leaves the session. Not next week — people forget, people fall out, and people move away.
Everyone who contributed to the composition, including whoever wrote the topline on their phone in the corner. Full legal names, dates of birth, society affiliations, publisher if any, and percentages. Signed by everyone. A photo of a signed sheet on your phone is a valid record — perfect is not required, written is required.
And agree who can say yes. Assign administration to one person or entity so a licence can actually be granted. Sync moves in twenty-four hour windows, and one co-writer who does not answer their phone kills the placement for the whole room. A slow co-writer is not a personality problem, it is a business risk that costs everybody money.
Every video below was checked against the channel that published it.
This is a plain-language map of how the systems work, so you know which questions to ask and which clauses to look at. It is not legal advice about your contract. Once there is real money or a real signature involved, that is a lawyer's job — and it is cheaper than the mistake.