Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Music
  3. News

SoundExchange’s new royalties tool designed to help musicians get paid

By

A woman wearing headphones looks at a smartphone while listening to music on a sofa.
Image used with permission by copyright holder
A lot has been made about the dearth of music royalties for musicians in the digital music age. There are plenty of places to point the finger, but one of the most basic reasons musicians don’t get paid when they should is the sheer complexity of tracking them down to deliver royalty payments when their music is played across any of the wide array of Internet, satellite, and traditional radio platforms now on the open market.

SoundExchange wants to help change all that. The performance rights organization has added a new online tool that will allow music fans and industry members alike to get metadata for their favorite digital recordings, and the company to distribute millions of dollars in unpaid royalties to musicians worldwide.

Recommended Videos

SoundExchange collects and distributes royalties on behalf of rights holders like record labels and musicians. The company alone currently has tens of millions of dollars in undistributed royalties because of incomplete International Standard Recording Codes (ISRC) numbers, according to Billboard. The codes are comprised of a two number country code, three character code for the registrant, and two numbers for the year, and they’re overseen by the RIAA in the U.S.

That data can then be used to track down and deliver music royalties to the proper parties from sources like Internet streaming services and traditional radio, in addition to other commercial settings where music is played from digital files. The new tool allows anyone to look up recordings and attach the codes, and SoundExchange has included the IRSC codes for its entire catalog of 20 million songs online.

Giving music fans and industry members access to an easy search engine for the codes is the company’s first step in solving the royalties issue.

“I think this is another step in the positive journey toward providing better information for the industry,” said SoundExchange president Michael Huppe.

The new online tool is easy to use, allowing anyone to look up music by artist name, track title, or release name, and narrow their results from a list of releases. There is even an advanced option that includes searches for song version, year, and file type, as well as a way to look up a recording by its actual ISRC number — presumably to ensure it is accurate.

With it’s new search engine, SoundExchange hopes to slowly whittle away at its unpaid royalty payments, and to help move the digital playback world towards one which always has complete information as to who should be paid per play.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Parker Hall
Parker Hall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Parker Hall is a writer and musician from Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin…
What is hi-res audio, and how can you experience it right now?
Dlyan Wireless Headphones

High-resolution audio, hi-res audio, or even HD audio -- whatever you decide to call it (for the record, the industry prefers "hi-res audio"), it's a catch-all term that describes digital audio that goes above and beyond the level of sound quality you can expect from a garden-variety MP3 file and even CDs. It was once strictly the domain of audiophiles, but now that major streaming music services like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, and Qobuz have embraced it, almost everyone can take advantage of what hi-res has to offer.

But what exactly is hi-res audio? What equipment do you need to listen to it? Where can you download or stream it? And does it actually sound better? We've got the answers.
What does the term 'hi-res audio' mean?

Read more
How to download music from Spotify for offline listening
How to download music and podcasts from Spotify: The downloads folder.

If you're a Spotify Premium user paying that premium Spotify fee, chances are you've taken at least some time curating playlists, liking songs, and using the platform's easy-to-use (and recently revamped) user interface to discover new and old music.

But sometimes all that music or your favorite podcasts aren't available if you find yourself without an internet connection to stream them from — like on a long plane ride or weekend camping trip in the sticks. That's where Spotify's offline listening feature comes in handy, allowing you to download playlists, albums, and podcasts through its desktop and mobile apps so you can still rock out while you're off the grid.

Read more
How to switch from Spotify to Apple Music
Spotify and Apple Music transfer on a smartphone.

Spotify is the world's most popular music streaming service for a reason. It has a massive catalog of music and podcasts, is full of cool music discovery and sharing features, and is really easy to use.
However, with its recent price increase and the fact that it still hasn't joined most of its peers in offering a hi-res audio quality option, you may be considering jumping ship for its closest competitor, Apple Music, which counts lossless hi-res tracks, mind-bending spatial audio, Dolby Atmos Music tracks, and a catalog that rivals Spotify's among the many attractive reasons to switch.

But there's one problem: you’ve spent a lot of time creating playlists and marking songs and albums as your favorites in Spotify. Is it worth the switch? Will all that hard work be lost in translation?

Read more