SoundExchange
 |
|
| Founded | September 22, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Type | Trust |
| 760742496 | |
| Location | |
| Services | Royalty distribution |
|
Members
|
43,000 |
|
Revenue
|
--- |
|
Employees
|
74 |
| Website | www |
SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects and distributes royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs — record labels, generally) and featured artists for non-interactive digital transmissions, including satellite, Internet radio, and cable television music channels. In addition to music, SoundExchange also collects royalties for comedy and spoken word recordings.
Prior to 1995, SRCOs in the United States did not have a performance right; that is, recording companies and performing artists were not entitled to receive payment for the public performance of their sound recordings. The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 together granted a performance right for sound recordings. As a result, copyright law now requires that users of music pay the copyright owner of the sound recording for the public performance of that music via certain kinds of digital transmissions. In 2000 a court decision ruled that this did not exempt any type of webcasters from the royalties, ensuring all forms of webcasters would pay royalties to the recording artists for the songs they played.
In 2003, SoundExchange became a wholly independent non-profit organization. SoundExchange also struck a deal with Sirius XM to set the standard royalties rates for satellite radio. In April 2003 SoundExchange settled the standard rate for webcast songs, establishing a discounted rate for small webcasters. John Simson served as Executive Director of SoundExchange. In addition, Newsweek wrote in 2002 that while artists viewed broadcast radio as a promotional tool, there was no evidence that webcasting helped promotionally, and therefore the revenue made by the webcasters would not help recording artists unless they were receiving royalties from the sites involved.
In 2012 SoundExchange announced that it had paid out over $1 billion in digital royalties to recording artists since its inception, with over $200 million distributed in just the first quarter. By October 2013, SoundExchange had distributed over $1.5 billion in royalties.Michael Huppe is contracted to be the president and CEO of SoundExchange through at least 2018, having served since 2011.
...
Wikipedia