Without wanting to sound like a PPI salesman, you may have unpaid royalties from services such as Pandora, SiriusXM and TV appearances. Register with SoundExchange for free to check and collect.

For those unaware, the typical structure of our streaming partners such as Spotify is as follows:

  • Premium users pay monthly subscriptions to Spotify
  • Users stream your music
  • Spotify pay a portion of subscription earnings to RouteNote for your music streams
  • RouteNote direct 85-100% of this to your account

Note, free Spotify users and other streaming platforms slightly differ.

What is SoundExchange?

SoundExchange is a non-profit established by the Copyright Royalty Board to collect and distribute digital performance royalties on behalf of artists/rightsholders. They are responsible for 32 million sound recordings and have paid out over $6 billion to date.

SoundExchange collects royalties from the following services:

  • Non-interactive webcasters – Services such as Pandora, where users do not pick what they listen to. As opposed to interactive services such as Spotify.
  • Satellite and Digital Cable TV – For music played through digital cable and satellite TV.
  • Satellite Radio Services – Services such as SiriusXM report plays and payment to SoundExchange

SoundExchange is different from performing right organizations. PROs collect royalties when music is played publicly in locations such as shopping and dining venues.

For full information, to sign up and start collecting royalties, head to SoundExchange.