Dangdut Musician Has Not Received Royalties Ahead of Eid, Ikke Nurjanah: We Need Transparency

JAKARTA - A cloudy sky covers the Indonesian dangdut music industry ahead of the 2026 Eid al-Fitr celebration.

Instead of getting holiday allowances from their own works, dangdut musicians are faced with the bitter reality of the decline in royalty income from January to December 2025 which has not yet been disbursed into their pockets.

The Collective Management Institution (LMK) Anugrah Royalti Dangdut Indonesia (ARDI) expressed its objection to the amount of royalties offered by the National Collective Management Institution (LMKN).

How not, the royalties which usually touch the range of Rp1 billion to Rp1.5 billion, suddenly fell freely to only Rp25,063,346. This drastic decline is claimed by LMKN to occur because the data on the use of dangdut songs is recorded at only one percent of the total use of national music.

ARDI's General Chair, Ikke Nurjanah, was unable to hide his disappointment.

The 51-year-old singer assessed that the policy and data collection system carried out by LMKN was very detrimental to the dangdut music genre, which is the music of national identity.

According to him, the one percent figure is very far from reality on the ground, where dangdut content still dominates the glass screen and digital platforms.

"this marginalizes dangdut. We all know that there are TVs that have dangdut programs all day, even going viral. Social media, many times, have been viral dangdut music. Not to mention events that use dangdut as a display element," said Ikke in a press release received, Wednesday, March 18.

"We need transparency of valid data sources when stating that this value is a right that ARDI members deserve," he added.

Ikke emphasized that data transparency is the key to rebuilding artists' trust in the royalty collection agency.

ARDI has actually tried to go through the mediation process by sending a letter since September 2025, but until now there has been no concrete meeting point from the LMKN.

This uncertainty triggered great turmoil among musicians, songwriters, and dangdut music practitioners who felt that their economic rights were being emasculated.

The dangdut artists urge the LMKN not only to take limited data samples or only based on narrow digital.

They asked for the data collection to include a wider dangdut ecosystem, ranging from cafes, entertainment venues, to folk festivals stages in remote areas that have long been the repository of the use of dangdut songs.