As an added bonus, they then get to use this money to lobby, litigate, and push for more power … and more ‘rights’ to collect even more money on behalf of folks they don’t plan on paying. And the cycle continues …

Example, let’s say that you are the trustee of Bill Gates’ estate, and you are responsible to find 9,000 people to divide up his estate(Forbes has him pegged as being worth $53 billion as of the 2006 list). If my math is right, each one will get nearly $6 million. Now you have a big responsibility, as well as a lot of zeros to deal with.

You are then faced with a choice. Do you find these people and give them their money, or do you claim that some people couldn’t be found and keep the money for yourself, simply because the will states that you can keep the money if you don’t find these people.

Now then, I finally had enough of you mismanaging funds, and have obtained a unfound list to Mr. Gates’ billions. Now I find nearly 200 people and sent them to you so that they can collect their money that they have properly inherited.

Now that the example is over, the real story is that Sound Exchange doesn’t want to work(like the lawyer), and so people like the live365 and yourself, Mr. Wilhelms, must do SE’s dirty work and send artists to sign up to recieve their royalty checks. Kind of a cheap way of doing PI work, don’t you think?

RIAA To Sue Minnesota
http://www.crystalair.com/content.php?id=91200708004

Finding an artist and registering him or her with SoundExchange is satisfying in many ways; the artist gets money, you prove SoundExchange is incompetent by doing something for free in a couple minutes that their paid staff hasn’t been able to do in years, and it reduces the amount of money SoundExchange can suck out of the “unfound” artists’ accounts to pay for the Christmas bonuses for the staff who couldn’t find the artists in the first place.

You can’t beat that kind of triple play.

Check their press releases. They never directly answer any questions. Their spokesmen talk around and past the real subjects.

Look at the last gem for an example; when asked if SoundExchange’s sponsorship of musicFIRST was legal, John Simson replied “the Broadcasters will say anything.” When asked if SoundExchange’s sponsorship of musicFIRST was legal, MIchael Huppe said the Board of Directors approved it unanimously. These guys are the nimblest side-steppers since Fred Astaire died.

I think John Simson has also learned the hard way that not everyone swoons when he walks into a room just because he’s a likeable guy anymore. His sorry showing on Velvet Rope, where he couldn’t explain some outright contradictions in his own statements and ran off after promising to discuss things, makes me sure he is going to pretend my letter never existed this time. He isn’t fooling anyone any more, but as long as he can fool himself and his bosses, he will be OK.

And, let’s face it, he doesn’t have to care what I think about the lousy job SoundExchange does, or the outright lies he tells. He doens’t have to because I can’t touch him. What am I going to do, take my clients to the collection agency down the street? Oh, that’s right. The Copyright Office and the CRB gave SoundExchange a monopoly. The lack of competition can build a real contempt in an organization, and we are seeing Exhibit A at work here.

As long as he keeps his RIAA masters happy, John Simson will continue to make a couple hundred thousand a year, plus fringes, even if he never finds another artist on that unfound list. If there was an honest-to-God independent voice on that Board of Directors, or one real artist representative, we’d already hear the noise. There’s nobody outside who can challenge the real leadership and no one inside with the guts to try.

So don’t expect an answer. Public opinion is just not that important to SoundExchange.