Sound Exchange

SoundExchange Announces $54.8 million in Q2 payments to artists, labels

Thriving streaming marketplace and initiatives to send out “old money” credited with largest distribution in company history

Washington, DC – SoundExchange, the non-profit performance rights organization appointed by Congress to pay digital royalties, began sending out payments totaling $54.8 million to recording artists and sound recording copyright holders. The quarterly distribution, the organization’s largest to date, includes royalties earned through play on Internet radio, satellite radio, cable TV music channels and increased revenue from foreign societies from which SoundExchange now collects. Digital royalties are on the rise across the board, but the organization also credits increased efforts to clean poor data, as well as partnerships with other organizations, with pushing the total above last quarter’s record distribution.

AFTRA and SoundExchange Launch Initiative to Distribute Monies Collected for Recording Artists

LOS ANGELES AND WASHINGTON, DC (June 2, 2010) – The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA, AFL-CIO), a national union of more than 70,000 performers, recording artists and broadcast journalists, and SoundExchange, a non-profit U.S. digital performance rights organization authorized to collect royalties for the digital performance of a sound recordings, today announced a new joint initiative to identify and distribute SoundExchange royalties which are owed to AFTRA member recording artists.