I recently read an article on Offbeat.com about 224 Louisiana Musicians owed royalties by SoundExchange and thought I would check things out.
SoundExchange is similar to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. They collect royalties for songwriters and publishers. The biggest difference is that they also collect performance royalties for the digital performance of sound recordings too. Sound Exchange collects royalties anytime a song is played on Sirius-XM and other Internet Radio sites including Pandora, Yahoo, Live 365.com, AOL, etc. They also collect royalties for satellite TC services including DirecTV and Comcast’s Music Choice.
According to the article on OffBeat, there are 224 musician in the state of Louisiana who are owed about $60,000 in total royalties. Also according to the article, since 2001, SoundExchange has collected and processes billions of plays and has paid out more than $600 million in royalties.
I quickly searched for a number of musicians that have been long time friends of Indie Artists Alliance and found a number of them on the list which leads me to believe that some of you are leaving money on the table….a lot of money
In order to receive the royalties to which you may be entitled, register with SoundExchange right away! use PLAYS (Performance Log Archive of Your Songs) to identify your performances and to provide them with any corrections to information reported by statutory licensee or to update the ownership information
For more information about Offbeat: offbeat.com/2011/06/29/224-louisiana-musicians-owed-royalties-are-you-one/