How do musicians know that a certain radio station is playing their music and consequently, collect royalties? Or how do even royalties work?
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A musician or song writer would usually sign up with a royalty collection society, such as PRS in the UK. When they join the society they register their works, so long as they are the songwriters, performer on the recorded work or are a publisher of the work. The collection society will then collect the royalties on their behalf. A radio station will submit what they have played over a certain period of time to the collection society who will work out how many plays the song had. The radio station pays a license fee to the collection society for the use of copyright music on the station and the royalties for the artists will be taken from this license fee and distributed to the musician, performer, publisher or copyright holder depending on plays.
There are performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, etc.) who’s job it is to monitor commercial plays of music (like radio stations) and collect royalties on behalf of their artists. The radio station will play the music, and pay the fees to the PRO along with what music they played. The PRO will then distribute those fees (minus their cut) to the copyright holders.
There are performing rights organisations like the performing rights society, which do all the administration of fees for musicians regarding airplay and use of music.
Once a song is a registered work, (usually through ASCAP or BMI) SoundScan will track all plays/streams and assign a royalty rate through your publishing house which pays out the money accordingly.
I worked for a radio station as a teen, my job was to answer the request line and to keep track of the play log. The play log would regularly get sent out by the station manager.
Doing college radio, we had to write a list of every song we played. Someone would just need to compile the lists from all of the stations and send a bill.
Since radio frequencies are governed by the FCC, it’s easy to make something like that a requirement to keep your license.
And how much does the artist receive? Is it a standard amount or is it set contractually?
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