SoundExchange hits $1b

STREAM LINE: SoundExchange will announce today that it has paid $1 billion to artists and labels since its founding in 2000, and that this year its quarterly payments exceeded $100 million. “The way the industry is going, it is about multiple revenue streams, not just one,” Michael Huppe, President of the nonprofit digital collection org, told the N.Y. Times. For most labels and artists, the payments they receive from SoundExchange for streams is the only money their records earn for radio play, since terrestrial radio pays only songwriters and publishers. On-demand services like Spotify and Rhapsody generally pay record companies directly, the Times’ Ben Sisario noted. The billion-dollar milestone gives some positive publicity to SoundExchange, which has been criticized for being slow to pay everyone who’s owed royalties. At the end of 2010, SoundExchange was holding $132 million for artists who haven’t registered or because of complications like bad or missing data about which songs the services have played. (6/18a)