In this article, you'll find all the information regarding the SoundExchange channel.
What is SoundExchange?
What types of royalties does SoundExchange collect?
What are the sources of royalties collected by SoundExchange?
Important Notes
SoundExchange is a non-profit organization established by the Copyright Royalty Board. SoundExchange collects and distributes digital performance royalties on behalf of recording artists, master rights owners (like record labels), and independent artists who own their masters.
This channel collects Neighboring Rights royalties in non-interactive streaming platforms, like Internet and satellite radio such as Pandora, SiriusXM, Slacker, iHeart, etc. If you want to collect your Neighboring Rights, you can do it by following the steps mentioned here.
Under the Copyright Law of the United States, 45 per cent of performance royalties are paid directly to the featured artists on a recording, and 5 per cent are paid to a fund for non-featured artists.
The other 50 per cent of the performance royalties are paid to the rights owner of the sound recording.
SoundExchange collects royalties from 3 main sources:
SoundExchange is different from performing rights organizations such as BMI, ASCAP and SESAC (the “PROs”). In the US, the PROs collect publishing royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers when their songs are publicly performed, they do not collect any royalties due to recording artists or sound recording rights owners. Registration with the PROs is a separate process. Please visit their respective websites for more information.
As per DSP's guidelines, the following genres and content types are not allowed: production loops, sound effects, karaoke recordings, classical music recordings of compositions in the public domain, DJ sets or continuous mixes, prayer recordings.