p2pnet.net News:- The members of the Big Four music cartel have tacky records.

In May, for example, New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer ordered Universal Music Group (France), Sony-BMG Music Entertainment (Japan and Germany), the EMI Group (UK) and the Warner Music Group (USA) to pay $50 million to musicians they’d had under contract.

In 2000, their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) launched SoundExchange to distribute webcasting royalties, although many webcasters and indies feared, among other things, that the RIAA-controlled SoundExchange wouldn’t represent their best interests if a conflict between them and the Big Four (then Big Five) ever arose.

Last year, SoundExchange became ‘independent’ and has now launched a DIY search site called PLAYS (Performance Log Archive of Your Songs).

Featured artists or sound recording copyright owners, “of a song recording that appears in the search results of PLAYS and have neither received any royalties to date nor registered with SoundExchange” can see if, “SoundExchange may be holding digital performance royalties for you”.

Anyway, to receive the royalties to which they “may be entitled,” claimants have to register with SoundExchange “right away!”

“The newly independent group retains a board membership with control split evenly between representatives from record companies and artists,” said CNET when SoundExchange became ‘independent’ from the RIAA.

“By law, the organization is required to give 45 percent of Webcasting royalty revenue directly to artists and 50 percent to record companies,” it said. “In its three years of operation, SoundExchange has distributed more than $10 million in royalties, the group said.”

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See:-
$50 million – Big Music vs Eliot Spitzer, p2pnet, October 22, 2004
split evenly – RIAA’s royalties unit to go it alone, p2pnet, 2003

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