SoundExchange —all one word— is the non-profit group congress designated to collect and distribute royalties for digital recordings. The group has paid more than $5 billion dollars to recording artists since its start. But it has also FAILED to pay others, when it was unable to locate them, through no fault of its own, and that’s where the unclaimed money opportunity lies.
When you get to the SoundExchange page for searching for unpaid, unclaimed royalties, you can see that it is very simply laid out. There is an alphabetical, searchable list of bands and individuals who have recorded music that somebody else may have used and paid royalties on.
There are 45,643 accounts listed in all! Some are famous musicians, like I found unclaimed royalties for Pat Monahan, lead singer of the band train. Others are unknowns. Case in point, I also found my old struggling musician boyfriend from when I was 23 years old listed!
And not all are rock or pop or country type bands like you would hear on the radio. In fact, the very first listing in the database is something called the March of Dimes chorus.
Even if you don’t find something now, SoundExchange encourages all performers on sound recordings to register with the group, so that it has your contact information for any future royalties.
The whole thing is impressively straight-forward and user-friendly and, once again, I encourage musicians and family members of musicians to check it out.
LINK: To find unclaimed royalties held by SoundExchange: www.soundexchange.com/artist-copyright-owner/does-soundexchange-have-royalties-for-you/search-for-artist/
