GETTING YOUR MONEY FROM SATELLITE RADIO
A primer on digital performance royalties
By Dani Oliva
You may have heard a publicist or radio promoter say they ’ ll pitch your music to satellite radio like SiriusXM and / or Stingray . Sounds like a great perk ! Maybe you listen to satellite radio yourself ! Beyond it being an excellent promotion opportunity if your song lands on one of these platforms , you get paid when your song is played via digital performance royalties . How do you collect these royalties and buy that Rolls , you ask ? Well , let ’ s figure out what digital performance royalties are first .
What are digital performance royalties and why do you need to know about them ?
Well , I ’ ll tell ya – I have several Canadian clients that are independent ( no label !) and make upwards of $ 10,000 a month from digital performance royalties . Yes , $ 10,000 a month ! You can too , so listen up .
Digital performance royalties are royalties collected when music is played on internet radio ( specifically , non-interactive digital radio like Pandora ), satellite radio services ( e . g . Sirius XM ), and digital television radio music services ( e . g . Music Choice ).
When you think of internet radio , you may immediately think of services like Spotify , Apple Music , Tidal . However , we ’ re not talking about those services here . We ’ re talking about royalties from non-interactive webcasting . What the heck is non-interactive webcasting and how is it different ? Non-interactive differs from interactive webcasting in that non-interactive webcasting is webcasting where the user cannot select the song that is coming up next . It ’ s as simple as that .
The next question that I am normally asked is whether performance rights organizations ( PROs ) collect these royalties for you . The answer is unfortunately , no . PROs , like SOCAN in Canada and ASCAP , BMI , and SESAC in the U . S ., collect royalties for public performance of musical works and distribute royalties for the songwriter , composer , and publisher . PROs collect royalties from places like bars , night clubs , shopping centres ( remember those ?), and
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