Company Collects Royalties but Can’t Find the Artists
SoundExchange is a company that collects royalties for thousands of artists. Many webcasters, satellite radio stations and other music services pay license fees to SoundExchange, enabling them to play the music of these artists. Sounds fair, but there is one problem: SoundExchange has trouble tracking down the artists, Kim Wilde, Wu-Tang-Clan, where are you?
So, SoundExchange keeps collection the money, and holds on to it until the rightful owners collect it. Apparently they don’t try too hard to track down the artists, because there are some well know artists in their “unpaid artist” list who are probably just one phone call away.
To make it even worse, the artists will lose all the money collected for them up to March 31, 2000, if they don’t sign up before the end of this year. What a crazy world are we living in. Some random company is allowed to collect the royalties of artist that are not even aware that this company is doing so. I mean, there could be better and more effective ways than this..
I agree that it is quite hard to contact “Ol’ Dirty Bastard” directly, since he’s not among us anymore, but it can’t be too hard to find out where his royalties should go to. Wilco, Kim Wilde, if you’re reading this… SoundExchange has some money for you.
