SoundExchange for Independent Artists: How to Get Paid

SoundExchange for independent artists is the one US route to master-side digital performance royalties. Own a recording that has played on SiriusXM, Pandora's non-interactive radio, or a webcaster? SoundExchange may already hold money for you. Getting paid rests on two things: completing registration and making sure the ISRCs are exact. (Our CMO directory has a reference card covering payment timing and the PPL/SCAPR counterparts abroad.)

Signing up is free and fairly simple, yet independent artists commonly put it off for years. Once they finally create an account, they often discover a claim for prior-quarter payments they could have received sooner.

The quick answer: SoundExchange alone collects US digital performance royalties on masters from webcasters, Pandora radio, and SiriusXM. There's no registration charge. Sign up in both capacities, performer and rights owner, then verify that every ISRC is identical.

The role of SoundExchange

SoundExchange is a nonprofit operating only in the US. Congress designated it, and the Copyright Royalty Board provides oversight. Its job is to collect digital performance royalties attached to sound recordings, meaning the master side, and send payment straight to:

• Sound recording owners (usually a label, or artists who retain their masters), who receive 50% of each distribution
• Featured performers (the artist named on the release), who receive 45%
• Non-featured performers (session players and backing vocalists, paid through the AFM-SAG-AFTRA Fund), who receive 5%

No other US organization collects these royalties. You can't choose a rival or decline the system. Whenever a service uses your master in a way that owes a US statutory digital performance royalty, SoundExchange handles the collection.

SoundExchange does NOT handle:

• Royalties for compositions (the publishing side, covered by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC for performance, plus the MLC for mechanical)
• On-demand interactive plays from YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, or Spotify, which your distributor receives and pays directly to you
• Physical purchases or downloads, also handled by the distributor
• Sync for ads, film, or TV, which requires a direct agreement between the rights holder and licensee
• Neighboring rights outside the US, administered through GVL, PPL, and the SCAPR network. Details are at /guides/neighboring-rights

Services that send money to SoundExchange

The law gets technical, but an independent artist can think of the category as "US digital radio that isn't interactive." It includes:

• SiriusXM satellite radio, including every play on every channel
• Pandora in non-interactive station mode (the mode that creates a station from a seed artist), excluding its on-demand Premium product
• Webcasters, such as Live365, AccuRadio, iHeartRadio's non-interactive service, internet stations, and terrestrial simulcasts delivered through TuneIn
• Background music providers, including Rockbot, Mood Media (Muzak), and some in-store services
• Certain pre-existing satellite digital audio radio services and additional niche platforms

These sources do NOT contribute to SoundExchange:

• US terrestrial AM/FM broadcasts. A law dating to the 1972 era exempts them, though it should have changed decades ago. Stations pay ASCAP/BMI performance royalties to publishers and songwriters but pay featured performers and master owners nothing.
• Interactive on-demand platforms including YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify. Their master royalties travel through the distributor directly to the master owner.
• Television broadcasts. In the US they produce publishing performance royalties, meaning PRO revenue, but no master-side neighboring rights.

This unequal treatment, where digital radio pays for masters but AM/FM does not, is peculiar to the US. Terrestrial stations in other countries also owe neighboring rights. The international setup is explained at /guides/neighboring-rights.

The registration process

There's no fee to register at soundexchange.com.

1. Choose the account type

Your registration can cover one or both roles:

• Featured performer, if you're the recording artist credited by name
• Sound recording owner (a.k.a. "rights owner"), if the master belongs to you
• Both roles when you own the masters and put out the recordings independently

An artist who distributed a self-released catalog and never entered a master rights deal usually fills both roles. Make sure both get registered.

2. Verify your identity

SoundExchange asks you to provide:

• A Tax ID, either an SSN for a person or EIN for an entity
• A W-9 for US claimants, or W-8BEN for a non-US artist receiving US digital airplay
• Banking details or an address for paper checks
• A government-issued ID to confirm identity

Expect verification to take 1-3 weeks in most cases.

3. Add your repertoire

Each recording you're claiming must appear in the account with:

• The track title
• Its ISRC, the unique recording identifier supplied by your distributor
• The featured performer's name
• The owner of the sound recording
• The recording year and release year
• The album title

SoundExchange relies on ISRCs to connect usage with recordings. When the file has no ISRC, its play log can't connect to your repertoire, leaving the royalty unmatched. The code entered at SoundExchange must be exactly the one your distributor delivered to platforms and placed in the master metadata. More payments fail because of mismatched ISRCs than for any other reason. Our explanation of ISRC and ISWC differences is at /blog/iswc-vs-isrc.

4. Provide a Letter of Direction when needed

If a master administrator or publisher registers SoundExchange repertoire for you, a Letter of Direction gives that party permission to accept your payments. Most independent artists complete this registration themselves because it isn't complicated.

Payment timing and terms

Distributions from SoundExchange arrive quarterly:

• Q1 payments go out in late June
• Q2 payments go out in late September
• Q3 payments go out in late December
• Q4 payments go out in late March

That is about a 3-month wait after each quarter closes. It's slower than the MLC, but quicker than international payments through ASCAP/BMI.

The cost is uncomplicated. About 5% is deducted as SoundExchange's administrative fee before the distribution reaches you. There's no additional deduction off the top, no charge to register, and no payment minimum.

US recipients can choose ACH, while artists abroad can receive international wires. Paper checks remain available, though they aren't encouraged.

The statements separate use by platform, letting you distinguish webcasters, Pandora, and SiriusXM, and also break earnings out by track so you know which recordings paid. Compared with most PRO statements, the level of detail is strong.

SX Works, its publishing operation

There is also a SoundExchange publishing division named SX Works. It provides a small set of services:

• International Standards, including ISWC issuance for certain catalogs
• Mechanical licensing similar to HFA for direct mechanical agreements
• Services for songwriter and publisher catalogs

The neighboring rights business at the center of SoundExchange operates largely apart from SX Works. Most independent artists have no reason to use the publishing division. US streaming mechanicals run through the MLC (see /guides/mlc); some physical and direct mechanical licenses go through HFA (see /blog/mlc-vs-hfa); and PROs generally issue ISWCs. SX Works fills a narrow role.

So for a working independent artist, the name "SoundExchange" usually refers only to neighboring rights.

Mistakes that cost artists money

These are the usual ways independent artists miss SoundExchange revenue:

1. They never sign up. Unmatched plays keep accumulating. After holding undistributed royalties for several years, SoundExchange reallocates them proportionally among other rights holders.
2. An ISRC is absent or incorrect. This is the biggest source of unmatched money. Compare every code in your SoundExchange repertoire, distributor records, and master metadata. All versions must be identical.
3. The legal and stage names don't connect. A distributor may report "Stage Name" while the SoundExchange profile lists only "Legal Name," which can defeat matching. Its fuzzy-matching tools help but aren't perfect, so put both names on the profile.
4. Nobody claims the featured performer portion. A label may own the recordings, but the performer's 45% still belongs to the artist. Plenty of signed artists have left years of money behind by failing to register in that capacity.
5. The tax identifiers conflict. Payments stop until any difference between the registered tax ID and the W-9 or W-8BEN is resolved.
6. International artists lack the proper paperwork. A non-US claimant must submit a W-8BEN with tax treaty details. Otherwise, SoundExchange applies 30% IRS withholding. Correct forms filed at the start prevent that deduction.
7. Earlier releases are left out. Artists frequently register new work but overlook the old catalog. Some prior money can be reclaimed through SoundExchange's back-payment procedure within its statute of limitations. Anything beyond that limit has been lost.

Recovering older payments

Previously unmatched play royalties are held by SoundExchange in a "Direct Pay" pool. Adding and claiming a recording prompts a search of that pool for historic uses tied to its ISRC, which can lead to a back-payment.

It's a one-off recovery process. Registering before usage builds up is still far better than trying to retrieve the royalties later.

Artists with new, expanding catalogs should register a release as soon as it becomes live. During onboarding, artists with a large back catalog should submit all of it and may see a back-payment on the first or second quarterly statement.

Davincii's part in the process

SoundExchange deals with masters, while Davincii mainly administers publishing on the composition side. As an optional dashboard service, however, we can also collect the SoundExchange owner portion, the 50% belonging to the recording owner, for masters you own. Our commission is 15% of the amount collected. Your 45% artist portion must always come to you straight from SoundExchange. No business is allowed to receive it on your behalf, and Davincii charges nothing against it.

As part of onboarding, we help everyone on our roster set up SoundExchange because:

• Registration costs nothing, takes little effort, and accesses actual revenue
• We already audit ISRCs for publishing, and the process uncovers the same errors that stop SoundExchange matches
• Both workflows depend on overlapping metadata, using identifiers we're already checking for PROs and the MLC

Our usual onboarding review includes SoundExchange alongside MLC setup (/guides/mlc) and ASCAP/BMI registration (/guides/ascap, /guides/bmi). You mark the releases you own in the dashboard, we register the owner portion through our account, and you personally claim the artist portion. Your direct claim is free and requires neither a Letter of Direction nor a Davincii fee.

Publishing rates are listed at /pricing. Use /royalty-calculator to ask for an estimate that combines performance earnings from the publishing and master sides. To begin the full publishing administration process, go to /signup.