‘Missing musicians’ owed $5.7 mil?
p2pnet.net news:- Last September RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) spin-off SoundExchange made headlines around the world when blandly announced it had somehow mislaid the whereabouts of thousands of musicians to whom it owed money.
Did it ever find them? Judging by its 1st Quarter 2006 Distribution announcement, it didn’t and the amount it now owes missing musicians seems to have risen more than tenfold from $500,000 to $5.7 million.
“SoundExchange is pleased to announce its latest distribution of over $8.5 million in statutory royalties (1st Quarter – 2006),” it says.
“This amount is from an allocation of over $14.2 million in royalties, the difference being the amount held in reserve for artists and sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) that have not been identified or located.”
Oh.
“Originally created by the Big Four Organized Music cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), it’s now out there on its own, theoretically, with something called PLAYS (Performance Log Archive of Your Songs), a kind of DIY search site,” p2pnet said in 2006, going on that the SoundExchange apparently couldn’t find some 9,000 people to whom it owed half-a-million-dollars.
Entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms (right) had SoundExchange boss John Simson (left) saying it’s not SoundExchange’s job to hunt down performers any more than it’s a bank’s responsibility to hunt down depositors who have left money in inactive accounts.
Wilhelms went on:
I love this analogy.
How wrong is it? Let me count the ways:
1. If you open a bank account, it means you know where the bank is, and you’ve already been in touch with them. No bank I know can, like SoundExchange, open an account in my name without me being involved somehow. (Any bankers out there are invited to open accounts for me to test this premise.) Even if I forget about the account, I am going to get a 1099 in February telling me about the interest I earned.
2. Oh yeah, that reminds me. Banks pay interest on the money that’s sitting there. SoundExchange doesn’t. That means SE isn’t a bank.
3. After an account is dormant for a time specified in state law, the money in bank accounts escheats to the state. (This is how Spitzer got to go after those “lost artist” royalties – those accounts should have been turned over to the state and the labels were in violation of NY law for not doing so.) The banks don’t get to keep the money like SE does.
4. Even if it is years later, a proper claimant can go to the state escheat fund and get his money back. Here the money is forfeited, forever, on December 15.
5. SoundExchange VOLUNTEERED FOR THIS JOB. They said “we will collect the money and distribute it the way it is supposed to be done.”
6. If my bank screws up, I can get it fixed, either by complaining to the bank or GOING TO ANOTHER BANK. Neither option is available to me here.
7. My bank is accountable to me, and to state and federal regulators. SoundExchange is accountable to no one, except the members of the RIAA.
8. No bank I know of has an account equivalent of “Various Artists,” yet SoundExchange is holding money for “Various Artists.” Usually a bank has a better grip on the identity of its account holders.
On the latest revelation, “I think they’re pulling numbers out of the hat and until such time as they show where the numbers are coming from you just can’t touch them,” Wilhelms told p2pnet, adding:
“Simson says he wants to build some transparency into this.
“Now’s the time.”
Definitely stay tuned.
Also See:
SoundExchange – 1st Quarter – 2006 Distribution
p2pnet – Big Music Owes You Money !!!, September 29, 2006
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April 29th, 2007 at 2:58 am
I think the Government will eventually have to get involved becuase of taxes….if that much money is owed to some people,, then the taxes that the government would collect should make them interested enough to look into it.
Mabye they would find sound exchange guilty of hiding profits from musicians. To say that a musician just “never collected the money” does not sound right.
There was a reason they never collected this money! Apparently, they have had it hidden from them or told that they were not entitled to it.
But do you know many people who would have a large check comming to them…that if all they would have to do is have it deposited in their bank that they would REFUSE IT?
That just does not make any sense. I think the musicinans were PURPOSLY misled and sound exchange was hoping no one would find out.
April 29th, 2007 at 7:53 am
SoundExchange does the same thing the performance collectives and music publers do to steal from songwriters. It’s all planned.