Old Songs Generate Bucks for Artists

[DudeAsInCool]

Old Songs Generate New Cash for Artists

By BEN SISARIO

Published: December 28, 2004

Three years ago, the singer and songwriter Suzanne Vega received a $41 payment from an agency called SoundExchange. It was so small she did not notice it in the accounting from her manager. The next year the payment was bigger, and bigger still the year after that.

"Now it's up to $800," she said by telephone from her home in Manhattan. "I wasn't even aware of it until recently."

The money Ms. Vega received was royalties earned from satellite and Internet radio, a growing source of income that many artists and record labels are just beginning to notice.

The amount paid by SoundExchange, the sole collector and distributor of these royalties, is a fraction of what is made in royalties by composers and publishers from traditional radio, but it has grown significantly in recent years with the rise and expansion of the satellite radio services XM and Sirius.

The main difference with the new royalties, though, is that they are paid not to composers and publishers but to the performers - the singers and musicians in a song - and the copyright holder of the recording, which in most cases is a record label.

SoundExchange, a nonprofit agency in Washington, is authorized by the United States Copyright Office to collect royalties from digital broadcasters and pay them directly to performing artists. Founded in 2000 and initially part of the Recording Industry Association of America, SoundExchange made its first payments in 2001 and, after a slow beginning, has begun to double its annual collections; in 2005 it expects to collect and allocate $35 million.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/arts/music/28roya.html