Musicians don’t gets performance royalties for music played on the radio, so performance royalties from SoundExchange must be a scam. It’s a logical train of thought, and it’s completely false.
SoundExchange is legit and has money waiting for musicians.
Fifteen years ago the U.S. Congress started changing the laws to create performance royalties for artist. Now, in some situations, not only do the people that write and own songs get royalties, but so do all the individuals involved in the recording of a song.
For over 80 years American radio stations have convinced musicians that radio does not have to pay performance royalties. They found a loophole, and they have made sure to keep it a loophole. Yet, it’s not the same story around the world. In many countries artist do get performance royalties.
Lately things have gotten better in the U.S. You, and your copy write holder, can now collect performance royalties for digital performances. This would be when music is played on satellite or Internet radio. The non-profit company SoundExchange was created to handle the payments music providers would pay to musicians from government licenses. There has been hundreds of millions of dollars collected on musicians’ behalf.
The only problem is that the concept of performance royalties is so unknown in the U.S. that many artist don’t collect the money they are due. It’s why soundExchange is holding more than $10 million dollars in royalties for musicians who they have contacted six times or more. It’s why SoundExchange has sent out 14,000 checks to artists, yet these artist have never cashed the checks.
Musicians are afraid it’s a scam. But the money is legit. SoundExchange has collected over $350 million dollars in performance royalties. Now you need to collect it.
It’s not too complicated, at it is never too late. SoundExchange has royalty payments that date back to 1996.
To start with, you need to go to SoundExchange.com or their registration site. The money is taxable. Don’t forget that Congress created this, so you will need to fill out tax forms. If you are in a band, this is a great reason to turn the band into a small business. You will be able to keep all the money together, and not have to register each member individually. (Also, turning your band into a small business has lots of other advantages and is fairly common among successful bands Detone8.com has interviewed.)
You will need a bank account that they can deposit the money into. You can wait for them to send you a check., but direct deposit is much faster.
The form mostly keeps track of where you live, what music you are involved in and how to pay you. They do have a large, 42 person staff that would be happy to help you figure everything out. You can e-mail them, or even call them during normal business hours. But even with all these people trying to give money to musicians, not all of the money can be given to the rightful owners.
Bryan Calhoun, Vice President of New Media at SoundExchange, warns why you need to properly fill out submissions to SoundExchange and digital music providers like Pandora.
Digital music providers have to submit their play lists to SoundExchange, so the proper artists get paid. But because these providers can only share information that was submitted to them, some musicians will never get paid. Why? Because someone filled out the form as BAND UNKNOWN or DEMO. Calhoun said that SoundExchange has a lot of money for BAND UNKNOWN.
With all this money SoundExchange is trying to give away you would think they would have their hands full. Yet, they are fighting hard to get even more money. If digital performance royalties are bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, what SoundExchange and the Music First Coalition are working on could dramatically change the music industry. They are trying to close the loophole broadcast radio uses to not pay performance royalties.
How much money could be paid to artist is hard to imagine. The scale is huge. Just one example is that France does pay musicians performance royalties for songs played on the radio. But because U.S. radio stations do not pay French musicians performance royalties, French radio stations do not pay U.S. musicians performance royalties. Calhoun believes that U.S. artist should received more than $100 million in performance royalties from foreign radio stations alone.
Musicians deserve to be paid for their work, and SoundExchange is one more way to get paid.
Performance royalties quick tips
- Create a bank account for music revenue.
- Make sure your information is correct when registering for XM, SIRIUS, Pandora and any other digital music provider.
- Register with Soundexchange.
Brett Lohmeyer is an editor for detone8.com, and in the day you can find him at
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