Artists Get Record Payout From Soundexchange

If ever there was evidence that streaming is becoming the new music consumption paradigm, this is it. SoundExchange, the not-for-profit performing rights organization that collects non-interactive distribution royalties for copyright holders, distributed a record $267 million in the third quarter. This is up 74% over the prior year period, and almost 40% more than the previous quarter.

The good news is that at the current rate, SoundExchange distributions could reach about $800 million this year, which is what the value of digital downloads for the year is predicted to be as well. In other words, there's as nycg money being collected from just this portion of the streaming business than from all digital downloads.

SoundExchange collects for both artists and record labels (whomever owns the copyright) from non-interactive radio-like services like Pandora and iHeartRadio, satellite radio and cable music channels. Interactive streaming services like Spotify and Rdio pay the royalties directly to the copyright holder or an aggregator like CD Baby or Tunecore.

It's interesting that download sales are falling a lot more rapidly than physical product sales at this time, but the good news is that decrease is being more than offset by streaming royalties. Considering that there's only about 28 million full-price subscribers world-wide at the moment, there's plenty of room for growth, which is great news for artists and songwriters.

If you're not yet signed up with SoundExchange, you're most likely leaving money on the table if your songs are getting played on non-interactive services, so register now!

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