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With the rapid success of digital music, artist, labels and publishers have been suffering because of lack of reliable digital music royalty reporting, leading to performance rights organizations being unable to distribute rightful royalties to the appropriate parties. SoundExchange, a NPO tasked to distribute digital performance rights royalties for satellite radio and internet music streams ended 2008 with $40 million in royalties that couldn’t be distributed due to lack of data and other $39 million in escrow for artists and labels who neglected to register with SoundExchange. There are ways to improve reporting, but there are many steps that the industry must take now. Artists and copyright holders should first register with SoundExchange, and also another PRO such as ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. Copyright holders must include all relevant meta-data on digitally released tracks, including at the very least artist, copyright holder or label, and track and album titles. Music services also need to take responsibility for accurate reporting. Copyright holders must register their works to make tracking data easier, and finally the music community must promote the exchange of data and payments by standardizing reporting. The bottom line is everyone can do more to ensure that performance royalties are being paid to the appropriate people.

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BMI reports an 8 % rise in performing right revenues and distributions for the year ending on the 30th of June 2007. The amount received is the largest ever performing rights collection by any PRO. The highest percent of change of income sources came from satellite audio (+70.1%) and miscellaneous domestic (+98.1%). The biggest drop came from new media (-25.3%)