What are Performance Royalties?
Performance Royalties are a New form of compensation for Musicians. Under the Webcasting Agreements between most Internet Streaming Stations (Live365.com,many [not all] individual stations,Yahoo! Radio,Radio@AOL,etc.),the RIAA,and the U.S.Copyright Office,Performance Royalties and logs of All Tracks Played (with other information) shall be collected by Soundexchange.com. Soundexchange.com is required to distribute those royalties to the Owners of the Performance Rights for those tracks and the Musicians who recorded those tracks. The formula used takes into account number of plays,number of people listening,and other stuff too close to Calculus for me. Bottom Line: You Could Have $$ Coming!
How does someone recieve any Performance Royalties they're owed?
You go to Soundexchange.com,download some forms,fill 'em out,and send 'em back in to Soundexchange. That's it! I know: it's a pain-didn't get into music to fill out forms-yaddayadda...Lemme ask you,"If you had to fill out a form to get paid for a gig,would you do it...or would you go ahead without filling out the form & play for free?" The money's going in for the songs we,& a lot of other webcasters,play. I doubt you'll be able to retire on it,but getting paid for your work is a good deal. Besides,if you DON'T file the forms,that money will end up helping to pay for some bigwigs' customized Hummer. Wouldn't you rather get it instead? Thought so.
Who needs to sign up for Performance Royalties?
Any musician who has ever released songs,or has played on released songs,needs to sign up;particularly those Independent Artists or Artists who are no longer Active in the business need to have this information available and talk it up to musicians,lables,any retired or older local musicians you know,etc. These are the most likely groups not to hassle with it or not know about it. Artists from the Teens & Twenties (or their heirs) on up to folks who cut local,regional or nationally distributed singles or albums in the Sixties,Seventies,or Eighties and thru to bands and individual soloists today have earned,or are earning,a piece of this pie. It's up to us who honor their work by playing it (& listening to it) to see that they don't get the short end of the stick. While in a lot of ways "The System" has taken advantage of Musicians through the years,this is one way we can make sure that our Friends,Family Members,or just our Fave Artists can get money that they've Earned.
