SoundExchange
The United States collective management organisation designated to administer the section 114 sound recording licence, and SAMPRA's US counterparty for neighbouring rights.
- Based in
- Washington, D.C., United States
- Founded
- 2003
- Website
- soundexchange.com
SoundExchange is the collective management organisation designated by the United States government to administer the statutory section 114 sound recording licence. It collects and distributes digital performance royalties to featured artists and to the owners of sound recording copyrights. In its own words it was “independently formed in 2003” and has “paid more than $11 billion in distributions to date”.
Its African relevance runs through South Africa. SoundExchange holds a reciprocal representation agreement with SAMPRA, the South African needletime society. SAMPRA’s own annual reviews list SoundExchange on its international representation table as at 31 December 2022 against the member type “Record Companies”, and from the 2024 review onward against “Performers & Record Companies”. On 18 November 2024 the two organisations jointly announced a reciprocal agreement covering performers, retroactive to the 2022 distribution period.
What SoundExchange collects in the United States is narrower than what SAMPRA collects in South Africa. Section 114(a) of the US Copyright Act limits the exclusive rights of a sound recording owner to reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public performance by means of a digital audio transmission, and states that those rights “do not include any right of performance under section 106(4)”. United States terrestrial radio therefore pays nothing for the recording itself.
