As of June 28, 2026 · Spring, TX
Most artists in Houston are leaving money on the table they do not know exists. The money is real, it is theirs, and a federal system already collected it. They just never went to pick it up.
It sits at a nonprofit called SoundExchange, and it is the single most overlooked check in independent music. Here is what it is, why it goes unclaimed, and why there is a deadline on it.
Three streams, three collectors, and the one you are missing
A song that gets played generates more than one kind of royalty, and a different organization handles each one. This is where most independent artists lose money, because they assume their distributor swept up everything. It did not.
Stream one is the public performance of the composition, the song as written. When your song plays on the radio, in a bar, or on TV, the writer and publisher earn a performance royalty, collected by a performing rights organization like BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC. Stream two is the mechanical royalty for the composition when it gets reproduced, including on-demand streams on services like Spotify and Apple Music. For self-published songwriters in the United States, that one runs through the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
Stream three is different, and it is the one this story is about. When your actual recording, the master, plays on non-interactive digital radio, the law says the recording itself earns a royalty. That covers SiriusXM, the radio-style stations on Pandora, and the thousands of internet webcasters. That royalty does not go to the songwriter as a writer. It goes to the people who made the record. And only one organization in the country collects it: SoundExchange.
Your PRO does not collect it for you. Your distributor does not collect it for you. If you have never registered with SoundExchange directly, that money has been accruing in a holding account with your name attached to it, untouched.
What SoundExchange pays, and to whom
SoundExchange exists because of a specific piece of federal copyright law that gave sound recordings a digital performance right. Congress named one nonprofit to collect those statutory royalties and pay them out, and that nonprofit is SoundExchange. This is not a private deal you negotiate. It is a federal payment running on a fixed formula.
The formula is the part worth memorizing, because it pays the artist directly. For every dollar of digital performance royalty, the law splits it three ways: 50 percent to the owner of the recording, 45 percent to the featured artist on the track, and 5 percent into a fund for the session musicians and background singers who played on it. Read the middle number again. The featured artist gets 45 percent paid straight to them, separate from whatever the master owner gets. If you own your master and you are the featured artist, both checks are yours.
The scale is not small. SoundExchange paid out $1.05 billion in 2024, up almost 5 percent over the year before, and it passed $13 billion in total distributions since it started in 2003. That is real money moving to real artists every quarter. The only ones it skips are the ones who never registered, because the system has no way to mail a check to a name it cannot match to a person.
Why the money sits unclaimed
SoundExchange keeps lists of recordings it has collected money for but cannot pay, because the performer or the rights owner has not registered to claim them. The reasons are ordinary. An artist puts out music through a distributor, sees the on-demand streaming pennies show up, and assumes that is the whole picture. Nobody told them digital radio pays the recording separately. Nobody told them to register a second time, in a second place, to get it.
So the royalties build. A track that gets spins on a SiriusXM channel or a Pandora station earns its digital performance royalty every time, quarter after quarter, and SoundExchange holds it. For an artist with even modest digital-radio play across a catalog, that holding account is not theoretical. It is a number with a dollar sign on it, waiting on a registration that takes one person an afternoon to complete.
Picture how it builds. A Houston artist puts out a project, and one track catches a programmer at an internet station or a curated SiriusXM channel. It gets added. Now it spins, day after day, in rotation. Every one of those plays earns a digital performance royalty, and SoundExchange logs it against that recording. The on-demand streams show up in the distributor dashboard, so the artist thinks the money is handled. The digital-radio royalty, a separate check entirely, piles up in a SoundExchange account the artist never opened. Multiply that across a catalog of tracks and a few years, and the unopened account is the size of a real payday.
This is the quiet cost of treating your music like a hobby when it is really an asset. The hobbyist never registers and never collects. The owner registers once and collects for the life of the recording.
The three-year clock is the part that costs people
Here is the urgency. When you register with SoundExchange, you can claim back-payments, but only so far back. The window runs roughly three years. And on the other side of that window, federal regulations allow SoundExchange to release royalties that have stayed unclaimed past a set period. In plain terms: money sitting on your name has a shelf life. Wait long enough and it leaves the account.
That makes registration urgent. Every quarter you delay is a quarter that ages toward the edge of the claimable window. An artist who registers today can reach back across the recent years of accrued royalties. An artist who waits keeps trimming the oldest, most-accrued money off the front of that window. The clock only runs one direction.
Getting your rights in order is the real work
SoundExchange is one collector in a system with three of them, and the artists who collect the most are the ones who registered with all three and who own the recordings underneath. That is the actual job. Own your master. Register your compositions where the writing money lives. Register your recordings with SoundExchange where the digital-radio money lives. The checks follow ownership and registration, in that order.
None of that requires a label or a lawyer to start, but it does require treating the paperwork as part of making the record, the same as tracking and mixing. M3 Studios builds recording, mixing, and mastering in Spring, TX, and the master you walk out with is yours to own and register. For the full picture of getting your songs and recordings registered to collect across every stream, our publishing and rights registration service maps it. The same instinct ran Houston music seventy years ago, when Don Robey built a record empire out of the Fifth Ward by owning the masters and the publishing. The collection systems got easier. The rule did not change.
The money exists. A federal system already counted it and set it aside. The artists who claim it are the ones who knew to go get it before the clock ran out.
Methodology: Figures are from SoundExchange's own reporting, including its February 2025 announcement of $1.05 billion distributed in 2024 and more than $12 billion cumulatively, and its later $13 billion milestone. The royalty split (50 percent rights owner, 45 percent featured artist, 5 percent non-featured musicians) and the unclaimed-royalty timeline are from SoundExchange and federal copyright regulation governing the digital performance right in sound recordings. This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Confirm current terms, splits, and deadlines on SoundExchange's official pages before you rely on them.
FAQ
What is SoundExchange and what does it pay?
SoundExchange is the nonprofit named in federal law to collect digital performance royalties for sound recordings. It pays out every time a recording is played on non-interactive digital radio such as SiriusXM, Pandora's radio stations, and internet webcasters. It distributed $1.05 billion in 2024 and has passed $13 billion since 2003.
How is a SoundExchange royalty split?
By federal formula, each digital performance royalty is split 50 percent to the owner of the recording, 45 percent to the featured artist, and 5 percent to a fund for non-featured session musicians and background vocalists. The featured artist's 45 percent is paid directly to the artist, separate from the master owner's share.
Why do Houston artists have unclaimed royalties?
Digital performance royalties accrue against a recording whether or not the artist has registered. A distributor and a performing rights organization do not collect this stream for you. If you never registered with SoundExchange directly, the money has been building in a holding account under your name, unpaid, because the system cannot match it to a registered person.
Do SoundExchange royalties expire?
Yes, on a timeline. You can claim back-payments going back roughly three years when you register, and federal regulations allow SoundExchange to release royalties that stay unclaimed past a set period. Registering sooner lets you reach more of the accrued money before the oldest quarters age out of the claimable window.
Does registering with SoundExchange cost money?
No. Registration as a recording artist or rights owner is free. The work is matching your catalog to your account so the held royalties can be paid. It pairs with owning your master and registering your compositions, so the writing, the mechanical, and the digital performance money all reach you.
Own the record, then register it everywhere it earns. M3 Studios runs recording, mixing, and mastering in Spring, TX, serving Houston and the metro, and the master is yours. See audio services or our publishing and rights registration.
- SoundExchange, "SoundExchange Surpasses $12 Billion Cumulative Distribution Milestone," February 24, 2025. https://www.soundexchange.com/news/soundexchange-surpasses-12-billion-cumulative-distribution-milestone/
- SoundExchange, "SoundExchange Tops $13B Distribution Milestone." https://www.soundexchange.com/news/soundexchange-tops-13b-distribution-milestone/
- SoundExchange, "Do unclaimed royalties expire?" https://www.soundexchange.com/faq/do-unclaimed-royalties-expire/
- SoundExchange, "Key Terms" (digital performance royalties and the statutory split). https://www.soundexchange.com/what-we-do/for-artists-labels-and-producers/key-terms/
- SoundExchange, "Artists, Labels & Producers" (registration and who collects). https://www.soundexchange.com/what-we-do/for-artists-labels-and-producers/
