M3 StudiosSpring, TX5 min readJuly 16, 2026Neighboring rights are the performance royalties a recording earns when it plays on radio, on television, or in a public space in more than 70 countries, and most Houston artists have never registered to collect a dollar of them. That gap moved into national view this month. On July 8, 2026, a coalition of the largest music organizations in the United States asked the U.S. Trade Representative to oppose a European Union proposal that could reduce or cut off nearly $300 million a year in royalties paid to American artists and rights holders. The money at the center of that fight is money Houston performers were already leaving overseas, unclaimed, before any policy changed.
Here is the useful part for a working artist in Spring, Klein, or the Third Ward: this royalty exists today, the path to collect it is open today, and understanding it turns a trade-policy headline into a deposit in your own account.
Every commercial song carries two copyrights. The composition is the underlying song, the melody and the lyrics. The sound recording is the master, the specific captured performance. Neighboring rights sit on the master. When a recording is broadcast or performed in public, the law in most of the world pays two people: the featured and non-featured performers on that recording, and the owner of the sound recording. That payment is separate from the songwriter and publisher money that a performing rights organization collects on the composition.
The United States handles this right in a narrow way. American law grants a public performance right for sound recordings only for digital transmissions: satellite radio, internet radio, and webcasting. SoundExchange collects that digital money and splits it by statute, 45 percent to the featured artist, 5 percent to a fund for non-featured musicians and vocalists, and 50 percent to the rights owner. American terrestrial AM and FM radio pays the songwriter but pays the performer and the master owner nothing, a gap covered in our piece on whether artists get paid for radio play.
Cross a border and the picture widens. Terrestrial radio, television, bars, gyms, shops, and restaurants across the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and dozens of other countries pay a performance royalty on the recording. If your song airs on a station in Manchester or plays in a boutique in Paris, it generates neighboring rights there. Someone collects that money. The only question is whether it reaches you or sits at a foreign society waiting for a claim that never comes.
The coalition letter to the U.S. Trade Representative was signed by SoundExchange, the Recording Academy, ASCAP, BMI, SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Association of Independent Music, the Artist Rights Alliance, the Future of Music Coalition, Music Managers Forum-US, the National Independent Talent Organization, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, and the Christian Music Trade Association. That is close to the entire American rights ecosystem signing one page.
Their concern is a European Commission proposal that would replace the current legal footing for these payments. In 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in the RAAP case that EU societies must extend national treatment to American performers and labels, meaning American recordings get paid on the same terms as European ones. The proposal under discussion would swap that clear rule for a "material reciprocity" test. Because the United States pays no terrestrial performance royalty at home, a reciprocity framework would give European societies a reason to reduce or withhold payments to American creators. The coalition estimates the exposure at nearly $300 million a year.
The money the industry is fighting to protect is money most independent artists never set up to receive in the first place. The fix for that second problem is entirely in your hands.
The trade fight will run its course through diplomats and lawyers. A Houston artist has no lever on the European Commission. You do have a lever on the far more common problem, which is a catalog earning overseas royalties that no one has claimed.
SoundExchange sits at the center of the American side of this system. It holds more than 100 agreements with over 75 collective management organizations abroad, a network that covers about 93 percent of the global neighboring-rights market. Its partners read like a map of where music earns: PPL in the United Kingdom, GVL in Germany, SCPP and SPPF in France, SENA in the Netherlands, SIAE in Italy, Gramo in Norway, and many more.
Collecting through that network takes two steps, and both are within reach of an independent artist working out of a bedroom or a rented room in North Houston.
First, register with SoundExchange as a recording artist and, where you own your masters, as a rights owner. That registration captures your United States digital performance money and creates your record in the system.
Second, complete a SoundExchange International Mandate. This is the document that authorizes SoundExchange to collect your neighboring-rights money from its foreign partners and pass it to you. Registration alone collects the American digital money. The mandate is the switch that turns on the overseas flow.
An artist who prefers a full-service option can register through an independent administrator instead. Companies that specialize in neighboring rights, along with some artist-services distributors, register you with foreign societies and collect on your behalf for a commission that generally runs 10 to 20 percent of what they recover. The commission is the tradeoff for reach and for chasing societies you would struggle to reach alone. For an artist with real international play, that percentage often returns money that would otherwise stay unclaimed.
Most American independent artists never file the mandate, so their overseas royalties accrue at foreign societies and, after a claim window passes, can be redistributed to other rights holders. That is the quiet cost of skipping the paperwork. Your recording earned the money. The absence of a registered claimant sent it somewhere else.
The right candidate for this work is any Houston artist with genuine international listening. Streaming numbers tell part of the story, but the neighboring-rights money follows broadcast and public play, so a track picked up by a European playlist that feeds radio, a placement on foreign television, or steady public-venue play abroad is the signal that money is accruing. Check where your audience sits. If a real slice lives outside the United States, the mandate pays for itself.
Two housekeeping habits protect the claim. Keep clean metadata on every release, because societies match payments to recordings using the ISRC and the credited performers. And keep your split arrangements documented, because neighboring rights pay performers and the master owner, so a session with several credited players needs a clear record of who is owed what. Our guide on split sheets covers the composition side of that discipline, and the same paperwork mindset protects the recording side.
Neighboring rights are one stream in a wider system, and they are easy to confuse with three others. They differ from the songwriter and publisher performance money that a publisher or PRO collects on the composition. They differ from the domestic SoundExchange digital money, which pays on American internet and satellite plays only. And they differ from the live performance royalties a venue generates when a band plays a set. Each of these has its own registration and its own collector. The Music Publishing and Royalty Guide lays out how the pieces connect so you can see which streams your catalog already earns.
The producer side matters here too. On many recordings the producer holds points in the master and can share in the rights-owner half of neighboring-rights money, a structure explained in our piece on how producers get paid. That is one more reason to document ownership of the recording before a track ever ships.
The trade dispute is a reminder, not a deadline. The European royalty pipeline still runs, and American artists still qualify under the current national-treatment rule. Use the attention as a prompt to do the one thing you control. Register with SoundExchange, file the International Mandate, and clean up the metadata and splits on your catalog. A recording that already plays abroad becomes a recording that pays you for it.
M3 Studios builds and delivers the recordings, stems, and files that carry your credited ownership into every royalty system, and you can start with the Houston recording pillar or lock your registrations with a publishing registration. Your money already earns overseas. This is how you claim it.
They are the royalties paid to the performers on a recording and to the owner of that recording when the recording is broadcast on radio or television or played in a public place. More than 70 countries pay them. The United States pays this recording performance royalty only for digital plays through SoundExchange, so most of an American artist's neighboring-rights money comes from abroad.
Yes, under the national-treatment rule that currently governs the European Union. An American artist whose recordings play on radio, television, or in public venues in participating countries earns neighboring rights there and can collect them by registering with SoundExchange and filing an International Mandate, or by using an independent neighboring-rights administrator.
SoundExchange collects a United States performance royalty for sound recordings only on digital transmissions such as internet and satellite radio. American terrestrial AM and FM radio pays no performance royalty to the performer or master owner. Overseas, terrestrial radio and public performance do pay, which is why the international mandate matters.
Registering with SoundExchange and filing the International Mandate carries no upfront fee. An independent administrator that registers you with foreign societies and chases the money typically charges a commission of 10 to 20 percent of what it recovers. The right choice depends on how much international play your catalog gets.
A coalition of American music organizations warned that a European Commission move toward a material reciprocity standard could reduce or withhold nearly $300 million a year in royalties paid to American artists, because the United States grants no terrestrial performance right at home. The current national-treatment rule still applies, so the practical step for artists is to register and claim while the pipeline runs at full strength.
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