A good article appeared in David Oxenford’s Broadcast Law Blog regarding audits conducted by SoundExchange. According to the blog, SoundExchange may collect royalties “for the public performance of sound recordings and ephemeral copies made in the digital transmission process by commercial webcasters.” This includes broadcasters that transmit music over their digital platforms.
SoundExchange conducts audits to monitor these transmissions. Notice of these audits is made public in the Federal Register. As the Broadcast Law Blog noted:
“SoundExchange may conduct an audit of any licensee operating under the statutory licenses for which it collects royalties. Such audits cover the prior three calendar years in order to verify that the correct royalty payments have been made (the notice issued this week audits the named broadcasters for 2022-2024, while the audits announced last month were filed in late 2024 and are for the years 2021-2023). The decision to audit a company is not necessarily any indication that SoundExchange considers something amiss with that company’s royalty payments – instead SoundExchange audits a cross-section of services each year (see our past articles about audits covering the spectrum of digital music companies who have been subject to these audits”
There is no question that SoundExchange takes this monitoring seriously. Stations providing digital transmission should take notice.
You can see the article in David Oxenford’s Broadcast Law Blog here.