1. Create a record label named "Unknown."
2. Form a band named "Various Artists."
3. (step 3 not required)
4. PROFIT!
No, really: Please take your royalty check Royalties are piling up from digital music streams, and a nonprofit has to track down artists who don't know. Then it has to convince them it's not a scam.
posted by planetkyoto on Mar 12, 2010 - 20 comments

"I've said all along, we are in this together." John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange - the royalty collecting arm of the RIAA - extends an olive branch through 2008 that will cap the advance payments internet broadcasters will have to cough up at $2500 per year. This comes in the wake of the Day of Silence, (it was June 26, did anyone notice?) spearheaded by Los Angeles-based terrestrial/online radio station KCRW (home of the brilliant Morning Becomes Eclectic) and SaveNetRadio, during which some of the biggest names in online radio - include Live365, NPR and Pandora - went dark for 24 hours, airing a one-hour broadcast twice during that day on the history of flat fees in public broadcasting. [direct .mp3, 38mb] Under the much-maligned changes made by our government's Copyright Royalty Board, the top six internet radio stations would have had to pay 47 percent of their total revenue (anticipated to be around $37.5 mil.) to the RIAA, starting this July. The Internet Radio Equality Act [summary, in its entire pdf glory] has been introduced to the House of Representatives, seeking to permanently reverse this decision.
posted by phaedon on Jul 3, 2007 - 69 comments

Sound Exchange Can't Find Wall of Voodoo Who else can't they find? Charles Mingus, Archers of Loaf, Art Blakey, T. Rex, Brand Nubian, Art Blakey, and thousands of others. The link is comprhensive list of the "missing," which is a long list indeed, but includes many who aren't that hard to find. Nashville entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms has tried to help SoundExchange as he has written about at least twice in Counterpunch. SoundExchange is the organization put together by the R1AA and the major entertainnment companies to collect royalties for streaming (Internet, DMX, XM) radio performances protected by copyright and to distribute it to the artists. These, indeed, are some of the royalties that could be going to artists, if only SoundExchange could find them. Unfortunately, many artists will not be getting pizzaid for performances from 1996-2000 if they do not register with SoundExchange by December 15 of this year (2006). SoundExchange was chartered to find these artists or their estates, but apparently they aren't looking very hard. Why? Because if the artists don't register, SoundExchange (read: R1AA and their corporate partners) GET TO KEEP IT!.
posted by beelzbubba on Oct 21, 2006 - 21 comments