Teosto’s annual report 2025: In the midst of structural change

CEO Risto Salminen’s review of 2025

In a constantly changing operating environment, protecting the creator’s rights and increasing their commercial value requires the ability to continuously improve our customer relationship management. At Teosto, we must also ensure international growth opportunities in rights licensing and continuously upgrade the technology we use.

Teosto performed well in a changing operating environment. In 2025, the royalties collected by Teosto reached a record high of EUR 84.8 million, while the total revenue amounted to EUR 92.3 million. The amount of royalties distributed to music creators and music publishers also increased to a record-breaking EUR 79.6 million.

However, the increase in royalties was largely explained by the change in the recording practice for international online music services, which had a positive effect of approximately EUR 4 million. The growth in royalties combined with the moderate increase in operating costs lowered our expense percentage to 13.2%.

In addition to continuously improving the efficiency of our operations, we also strive to continuously make our operations more open and transparent. For the first time, in addition to the operating expense percentage, we will present our total deductions for the various categories of music use in the key figures of our annual report for 2025. These figures illustrate even better how much of the royalties collected is left for our rightholder members after we have deducted our own operating costs and the share of cultural promotion activities from the revenue. We want to be an international pioneer in developing the transparency of copyright administration.

The importance of a strong network of partners is growing

Strategically, 2025 was an important year for Teosto in terms of our ability to operate internationally and technological upgrades.

We decided to end our long-standing Polaris Hub collaboration with the Danish Koda and the Norwegian Tono.  In 2025, we made the major decision to become a customer of the German and English company ICE’s Core service in the licensing of international online music services. We also started using ICE’s new Cube work documentation system, a change that was preceded by several years of development work.  We used the new system in all of last year’s distributions.

At the same time, we continued our work on the total overhaul of our reporting and distribution systems together with the Irish company Spanish Point Limited. The aim of the overhaul is to create a more transparent, scalable and technologically sustainable foundation for Teosto’s core operations.

When selecting partners, our goal is to find the best partners to help us develop Teosto into an even better copyright society for our rightholder members and music user customers.

AI is at the centre of discussions about the future of the music industry

In 2025, Teosto also actively sought to influence the future direction of the music industry. The impact of generative AI on the creative primary production of music, copyright and market structures was at the heart of our Finnish and European influencing work as well as in the advocacy of the creative primary production of music and in the industry cooperation of Luovat ry. We participated in the preparation of new legislation and in discussions, particularly with regard to the implementation of the EU’s AI Act. Our goal is for technological development to support the sustainable growth of the music industry and the earnings of rightholders in the long term.

We are also experiencing the accelerating adoption of AI at workplaces. Even in the age of AI, Teosto’s competent and committed personnel are the foundation of our operations. In 2025, we systematically invested in the development of our personnel’s competence, future skills and work ability. In a changing operating environment, the ability to keep up comes from the people, and this investment is a key part of Teosto’s long-term success.

Promoting a sustainable future

We worked on building the future of Finnish music culture through the Teosto Cultural Foundation in particular. In 2025, we donated approximately EUR 20 million in investment assets from the Teosto Fund to the Foundation and EUR 0.5 million for the Foundation’s actual support activities. The additional transfers under preparation will strengthen the position of the Teosto Cultural Foundation as a future-oriented and permanent support organisation for the diversity, change and growth of Finnish music.

In addition to supporting the Teosto Cultural Foundation, we also supported the Finnish music industry through Music Finland and other music industry organisations and foundations. Our promotion activities also included the annual Teosto Prize, which is one of the biggest art prizes in the Nordic countries, the TOP 20 Future Hitmakers course for young music creators and many content and partnership collaborations.

The new strategy will show directions for different futures

In 2025, we started updating Teosto’s strategy. In my opinion, our updated mission perfectly describes the foundation of Teosto’s existence: we increase the commercial and cultural importance of music. 

In our upcoming new strategy, we will build on our strengths to ensure a sustainable future for music:

• we will develop our partnerships in Finland and internationally;
• we will strengthen our international operations and competitiveness;
• we will continuously overhaul and innovate to improve the technological foundation of our operations;
• we will continue investing heavily in advocacy work to make Finland and Europe even better places to work and succeed in music.