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

By Parker Hall March 9, 2016

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.

Topics

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…

Audio / Video

What is spatial audio? The 3D sound experience fully explained

Person listening to spatial audio using Apple AirPods Max headphones.

Since Apple added “spatial audio” to the Apple Music streaming service and the AirPods family of wireless earbuds and headphones in 2021, it feels like you can’t read about new audio products or services without running into that term. And just a few short years later, it’s seemingly everywhere.

This has led to a lot of misconceptions about what spatial audio is, how it works, and why you need to hear it for yourself. People often ask, “If Apple created spatial audio, why are other companies claiming they do it, too?” The answer is that Apple didn’t create it, and you certainly don’t need to own its products to experience spatial audio.

Audio / Video

How to download music from SoundCloud on desktop and mobile

Soundcloud Interface on a Macbook.

If you’re a huge music fan, you’ve probably combed through the many playlists, artists, and albums of your Spotify or Apple Music subscription. But what about all the indie artists of the world? Some music-streaming platforms are better than others at celebrating the
‘unsung gem’ acts, but one of the most reliable forums for new, off-the-grid tunes is SoundCloud.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud has always prioritized music that’s a bit under the radar. With over 320 million tracks in its library, the platform will even let you download a majority of its songs and albums.

Audio / Video

The best kids headphones of 2024: for fun, safety, and sound

Two kids using the Puro Sound PuroQuiet Plus to watch something on a tablet.

Kid-friendly consumer tech is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that there’s an entire market of headphones designed exclusively for young ones. But when we think “kid-friendly,” sometimes we imagine products that are built to be a bit more throwaway than their adult counterparts. That’s not the case with the products on our list of the best headphones for kids, though.

We want our child-tailored headphones to include parental-controlled volume limiters, to ensure our children aren’t harming their eardrums. Pretty much every entry on our list checks this vital box, but we also wanted to point you and yours toward products that offer exceptional noise-canceling, built-in mics for phone and video calls, and long-lasting batteries for schooldays or a long flight.