M3 StudiosSpring, TX5 min readJuly 13, 2026Do artists get paid for radio play? The songwriter gets paid and the recording artist gets nothing. Every AM/FM spin in the United States generates a performance royalty for the composition, collected through BMI, ASCAP, or another performance rights organization, while federal law exempts terrestrial radio from paying anything for the sound recording itself. Houston moved into the top five American radio markets in Nielsen's fall 2025 rankings, which turns that century-old gap into a Houston-sized number.
The rule sounds impossible the first time an artist hears it, so it deserves a slow walk-through. Satellite radio pays for the recording. Webcasters pay for the recording. Streaming services pay for the recording. The broadcast tower on the horizon pays the writers and stops there. Understanding exactly where the money flows, and where it stops, decides which registrations a Houston artist files this year and which checks go permanently unclaimed.
Every released song contains two separate copyrights. The composition covers the lyrics, melody, and structure, and it belongs to the writers and their publishers. The sound recording covers the specific captured performance, and it belongs to whoever owns the master. The two properties earn separately, move separately, and get registered in different places, which is why the split sheet you sign on the writing day matters years later.
American radio law splits cleanly along that line. Broadcast stations pay blanket license fees to the performance rights organizations, and that money flows to compositions: writers and publishers. Sound recordings received a performance right only for digital transmissions, under the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995, which is why SiriusXM and internet radio pay recording royalties through SoundExchange while AM/FM towers owe the recording side nothing. The recording side of a catalog still earns plenty of other places: streams, sales, sync placements, samples. Broadcast is the one room in American music where the master walks in free. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in a December 2025 analysis, put the American position bluntly: the United States stands with Iran and North Korea among the only countries that recognize no terrestrial performance right for recordings. Even China amended its copyright law in 2020 to pay broadcast remuneration on sound recordings.
Picture one song running on Houston radio through a summer afternoon. The station's blanket license money reaches the PROs, the PROs match the airplay, and the writers and publishers of that song collect their shares the following cycles. The vocalist who delivered the take, the players behind it, and the owner of the master collect zero from that spin. The same song an hour later on satellite radio or a webcast triggers a statutory digital royalty, split 45 percent to the featured artist, 50 percent to the rights owner, and 5 percent to non-featured musicians and vocalists, all paid through SoundExchange. One song, one afternoon, two completely different economies. Multiply that split across every drive-time hour in a market the size of Houston and the scale of the gap comes into focus. We covered the digital side, and the unclaimed money sitting in it, in our SoundExchange breakdown, and the fund holding money for the players in our session musician royalties report.
The broadcasters' historical defense is promotion. Airplay sells records, the argument runs, so exposure is the payment. That logic carried real weight when radio was the discovery engine of American music. Discovery has since moved to streaming, playlists, and short-form video, while stations continue selling advertising against recordings and returning none of that revenue to the people on the record. The promotion argument survives mostly because it is written into the economics of an industry that grew up on it, and the industry defends it hard in Washington every single session.
Every spin pays the songwriter and pays the performer nothing. Which side of that line you stand on is decided by paperwork, and the paperwork is yours to file.
The American Music Fairness Act is the current attempt to close the gap. Introduced in the 119th Congress as S. 326 by Senators Marsha Blackburn, Alex Padilla, Cory Booker, and Thom Tillis, with companion bill H.R. 861 from Representative Darrell Issa, AMFA would require terrestrial broadcasters to pay performance royalties on sound recordings, the way satellite and streaming already do. The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee in a prior Congress, the furthest any version has traveled, and has been reintroduced each session since. Senator Blackburn's framing at introduction: the United States is the only democratic country in the world where artists collect nothing from AM/FM airplay.
The design answers the small-station objection directly. Stations earning under $1.5 million in annual revenue, with parent companies under $10 million, would pay a flat fee below $500 per year for unlimited music, and college and non-commercial stations receive their own protections. The heaviest obligations land on the large broadcast groups. There is a reciprocity prize attached as well: because foreign royalties move on reciprocal agreements, American artists currently forfeit the terrestrial royalties other countries collect for their own performers, a loss the Recording Academy counts in the tens of millions of dollars every year. AMFA is endorsed by the Recording Academy, SAG-AFTRA, the American Association of Independent Music, the RIAA, SoundExchange, and the American Federation of Musicians. The broadcast lobby opposes it with equal organization, which is why the bill keeps coming back and keeps stalling.
Houston's radio footprint makes the stakes local. Nielsen Audio moved Houston into the top five American radio markets in its fall 2025 rank revisions, ahead of San Francisco, with a listening population in the millions. A record in rotation across this market is generating real composition royalties every week for whoever registered the writer side, and generating nothing for the recording side of the same song, no matter how heavy the rotation runs. Radio still moves culture here: a record breaking on Houston airwaves carries weight with bookers, brands, and listeners that a playlist add rarely matches. The city's community and college signals, from Texas Southern's KTSU to listener-funded KPFT, remain a genuinely open door for independent releases, their music directors still hear direct submissions from local artists, and AMFA's small-station carve-outs are built to keep exactly those doors alive.
So the practical answer for a Houston artist runs in three moves, all on the money that already exists. First, own the writer side: affiliate with a PRO and register every work, because radio money for compositions only reaches registered writers, and the BMI versus ASCAP choice shapes how it arrives. Second, register with SoundExchange, since digital radio pays the recording side today and holds unclaimed royalties on a clock. Third, treat verified airplay as a business asset: documented spins strengthen venue conversations and licensing pitches, and the full picture of what a performance itself pays is mapped in our live performance royalties guide. The registrations live inside the larger system covered on our Houston music publishing and royalty guide.
Documentation carries the whole play, so treat airplay like the business record it is. PRO statements showing performance credits, station charts, and dated airplay logs all count as proof a record moved in a top-five market, and proof is what a booker or a music supervisor responds to. A spin nobody documented might as well have happened in another city. Keep the statements, screenshot the adds, and file everything by release, because the catalog with records attached is the catalog that gets taken seriously in every later negotiation.
Watch the bill, but build on the law as it stands. If AMFA passes, a new royalty stream opens on the recording side and the same discipline applies: registered, documented catalogs collect first. If it stalls again, the writer-side money keeps flowing to the artists organized enough to claim it. Either way, the artists who lose are the ones who assume somebody pays them automatically.
On American AM/FM radio, songwriters and publishers get paid through performance rights organizations, and the recording artist collects nothing for the sound recording. Satellite radio, webcasts, and streaming pay the recording side through SoundExchange or direct licenses, so the answer depends entirely on the medium.
Federal copyright law grants sound recordings a performance right only for digital transmissions. Terrestrial broadcast is exempt, a position broadcasters have defended for decades on the argument that airplay is promotion. The United States is the only democratic country that maintains this exemption.
A bipartisan bill, S. 326 and H.R. 861 in the 119th Congress, that would require AM/FM stations to pay performance royalties on sound recordings. Stations under $1.5 million in revenue would pay a flat fee below $500 per year, with added protections for college and non-commercial stations.
They pay composition royalties through PRO licenses, like every broadcaster, at rates scaled to their size. They currently owe nothing on sound recordings, and the American Music Fairness Act would cap their new obligation at nominal annual fees to keep small and educational stations on the air.
Affiliate with a performance rights organization and register every song to collect the composition royalties AM/FM airplay already generates, then register with SoundExchange to collect digital performance royalties from satellite radio and webcasts. Both registrations are free, and unregistered royalties eventually expire unclaimed.
Follow M3 Studios for the business behind the work: Instagram @metamusicmedia.x, TikTok @metamusicmedia, YouTube @metamusicmedia. Questions: info@metamusicmedia.com. Setting up the writer-side registrations that radio play pays into is handled end to end through Publishing Registration.
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