Brazil's music societies told big tech to license now. The AI bill is still waiting

Brazil's music collecting societies aren't waiting for Congress, and Congress has just told them to keep waiting. On 13 Feb 2026 ECAD published a letter that it and the music societies that run it sent to the companies building generative AI, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon among them. The letter is dated 22 Dec 2025. Its message, in our translation: if you want to use our members' content for data mining, training or developing AI systems, talk to us about "authorisation, remuneration and partnerships". If you are already doing it, get in touch so that "an amicable solution" can be negotiated "to avoid future litigation".

Who signed, and why does the list matter?

ECAD (Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição) is the single office that Brazil's copyright law requires the music societies to keep for collecting and distributing public-performance royalties (article 99). Alongside it, the letter is signed by seven of those societies (Abramus, Amar/Sombrás, Assim, Sbacem, Sicam, Socinpro and UBC), the music publishers' union UBEM, the broadcasters' association ABERT, the national newspaper association ANJ and the magazine publishers' association ANER.

ABERT is the interesting name. Broadcasters are music users: under article 68, playing music on radio or TV is public performance that needs authorisation, which is what ECAD licenses. So broadcasters usually sit across the table from the societies. Here they sign on the same side, because their own news and programmes are training data too. A coalition of rights owners and rights users is harder to dismiss as one sector protecting its income.

What does the letter actually claim?

Less than the headlines suggest, and that is deliberate. It doesn't name a song, accuse a specific company or put a figure on damages. It says AI "must respect" copyright under the Federal Constitution and Lei 9.610/98, that unauthorised use "may compromise" journalistic and artistic production, and that the signatories are open to meetings leading to agreements "beneficial to all".

ECAD's own introduction goes further than the letter. It says ECAD understands that AI tools are trained on protected musical works used without their authors' authorisation to generate new music, and that the public performance of music resulting from that misuse makes collecting copyright royalties appropriate. That is a different lever from a training licence. ECAD doesn't need an AI company to reply to send an invoice to a venue or broadcaster playing music in public. Its announcement doesn't say how it would identify AI-derived music or who would be paid for it.

Why not wait for the AI bill?

Because the bill has been waiting a long time. The Senate approved PL 2338/2023 on 10 Dec 2024 and sent it to the Chamber of Deputies, with a rule that protected works such as music can't be used without authorisation and payment to their authors. The InterSpace Daily, citing Agência Brasil, reported in August 2026 that the Chamber's special committee on AI had not met since November 2025.

The timetable has slipped more than once. On 9 June 2026 Chamber president Hugo Motta ruled out a vote that week, with rapporteur Aguinaldo Ribeiro still drafting his report and seeking agreement with the Senate. On 24 Aug Ribeiro said the vote should come after the October elections, Mobile Time reported, and that open points, copyright included, were being worked through with the Senate rapporteur, Eduardo Gomes. On 19 May ECAD and several music societies, with publishers, audiovisual and journalism bodies and CISAC, sent the committee another letter asking that the final text guarantee "licensing, control and remuneration".

Does Brazil's 1998 law already cover AI training?

This is the non-obvious part of the societies' position, and the reason the letter cites the 1998 law rather than the bill. Article 29 of Lei 9.610/98 says any use of a work, "in any form", needs the author's prior and express authorisation, and its list includes reproduction, "inclusion in a database, storage on a computer" and "any other forms of use that exist or may be invented". A training dataset is, at minimum, copies stored on a computer.

The law's list of exceptions (article 46) doesn't mention data mining at all. That is our reading of the statute, not a court ruling, but it means the societies can argue, with a straight face, that the licence obligation exists today and the bill would only add enforcement and rules on how payment is calculated. AI companies are likely to disagree. The letter puts them on written notice either way.

What we think

The letter is a polite opening move, but it changes the default. Until a court or Congress says otherwise, Brazil's music bodies are treating training as a licensable use under existing law. They have made that position public and invited every major developer to negotiate on it.

Who gains: the societies, which position themselves as the obvious counterparty for any licence covering Brazilian repertoire, the same role GEMA is playing in Germany after the Munich ruling against Suno. Who could lose: songwriters whose works aren't properly registered, because any collective deal will be distributed on registration data, and independent artists who never joined a society at all. AI companies lose the comfort of silence. If they ignore the letter, that silence is on the record.

The weak point is the public-performance idea. Charging venues for AI-made music that may infringe, without saying how it would be identified or who would be paid, risks money flowing to the collecting system rather than to the writers whose work was taken. ECAD should publish how it would distribute that money before it tries to collect it.

What should Brazilian artists do now?

Check that every work is registered with your society and that your splits are right. Any AI licence, whether it comes from these talks or from the bill, will be paid out against that data. Read your distributor's terms for AI clauses, and ask your society, in writing, whether it has received replies to the letter. ECAD's announcement doesn't mention any.