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
What is SoundExchange?
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.
What types of royalties does SoundExchange collect?
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.
What are the sources of royalties collected by SoundExchange?
SoundExchange collects royalties from 3 main sources:
- Non-interactive webcasters: SoundExchange collects royalties from non-interactive webcasters, that is service providers that do not allow users to pick and choose what they listen to. Pandora is an example of a non-interactive webcaster, whereas MySpace or YouTube are interactive (or on-demand) streaming services because a user picks exactly what he/she wants to listen to.
- Satellite and Digital Cable TV: When your song is played through digital cable and satellite television music-related services like Music Choice (Digital Cable) and Muzak (Dish), SoundExchange collects and distributes the royalties.
- Satellite Radio Services: In the world of terrestrial radio, it's only the songwriter and publisher that receive performance royalties, not necessarily the performing artist (unless they own or control their underlying composition(s)). However, in the world of satellite radio, like SiriusXM, SoundExchange monitors their plays and allocates the money to recording artists accordingly.
Important Notes
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.
