If you have released music as an independent artist, there is a very good chance you are leaving a meaningful royalty stream uncollected every single quarter. Not because of any complicated legal barrier or expensive registration process, but simply because nobody told you to sign up for it. That platform is SoundExchange, and it exists specifically to pay recording artists and master owners when their music plays on non-interactive digital radio services.

Unlike your distributor, which collects on-demand streaming revenue from platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, SoundExchange collects an entirely separate royalty, governed by federal law, from services like SiriusXM, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and internet/webcast radio. This money does not flow through your distributor. It does not flow through your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). It sits in a holding pool, waiting for you to register and claim it, and it has a time limit.

This guide walks you through exactly what SoundExchange is, how the royalty split works, what information you need to submit your catalog, and the most common mistakes that cost independent artists real money every year.

What Is SoundExchange and What Does It Actually Collect?

SoundExchange is a U.S. nonprofit organization, the only one designated by Congress, that collects and distributes digital performance royalties for sound recordings. Sound recordings are the master recordings, the actual audio files your listeners hear, not the underlying composition (the lyrics and melody). These are two separate copyrights, and they generate two separate royalty streams.

The key distinction is the type of service triggering the royalty. SoundExchange covers non-interactive digital radio: services where the listener cannot choose which specific song plays next, cannot skip on demand, and cannot replay a track at will. When a song plays on SiriusXM, Pandora's radio tiers, iHeartRadio, or any internet webcast station, that play triggers a statutory digital performance royalty. SoundExchange collects that royalty from the service and pays it to the people behind the recording.

These royalties are set by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, not by negotiation between services and artists. The rates apply uniformly to all qualifying platforms and are updated periodically. Under the current rate schedule, commercial broadcasters pay a fixed per-performance fee for every listener who hears a song. The more your music gets spun on digital radio, the more royalties accumulate in your name.

The scale of this system is significant. SoundExchange has distributed more than $13 billion in digital performance royalties to over 850,000 music creators since 2003, including roughly $1 billion per year in recent years. A meaningful portion of that money goes uncollected annually because the artists and rights owners on those recordings have never registered.

The 45/50/5 Royalty Split and Why It Matters for Independent Artists

Every dollar SoundExchange collects on a recording is divided by law into three fixed shares. How you register determines how many of those shares actually land in your account. This is the most important thing to understand before you create your profile, and the most common source of lost royalties for self-releasing artists.

The remaining 5% goes to a fund for non-featured performers (session musicians and backing vocalists), administered by the AFM and SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund. This share never appears in your account because it is directed elsewhere by statute.

The critical mistake that costs independent artists real money is registering only as a featured artist when they also own their masters. If you self-released your music, you almost certainly own the masters, which means you are entitled to both shares. Registering for only one role means you collect roughly half of what you are owed, indefinitely, with no alert from SoundExchange to tell you what you are missing.

'SoundExchange is the closest thing in music to free money that most independent artists never claim. The royalty is statutory, the registration is free, and an owner-artist keeps 95% of every play.'

Royalty Copilot
SoundExchange Registration Guide, 2026

Step-by-Step: How to Register and Submit Your Catalog

Registration is free and takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes for a small catalog. Here is exactly what to do, in order, to ensure you are set up to collect the full royalty you are entitled to.

Step 1: Choose Your Registration Role

Go to soundexchange.com and create an account. The first decision you will make is your registration role. You can register as a Featured Artist, a Sound Recording Copyright Owner, or both. If you have self-released your music and have not assigned your master rights to a label, choose both. This single decision determines how much of your royalty you will actually receive.

If you registered with SoundExchange years ago but are not sure which roles your account holds, log in and check before assuming you are fully covered. Many artists who registered early only selected the artist role and have been silently forfeiting their owner share ever since. Adding the second role to an existing account costs nothing.

Step 2: Verify Your Identity and Set Up Payment

SoundExchange will ask you to provide identity and tax documentation before making any payments. For U.S.-based registrants, this means a completed W-9 form. For artists based outside the United States who receive U.S. digital airplay, a W-8BEN form is required. You will also need to provide banking details for direct deposit or a valid mailing address for paper checks.

Step 3: Submit Your Catalog with Accurate ISRCs

After your account is set up, the most critical step is submitting your recordings. For each track, you will need to provide the song title, featured artist name, album or release title, release date, and most importantly, the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code). The ISRC is the unique identifier that SoundExchange uses to match incoming play reports from SiriusXM and Pandora to your specific recordings.

Your ISRC for each track is available in your digital distributor's dashboard. If you distribute through platforms like DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, or Music Cast, the ISRC is listed alongside each release in your catalog view. Copy it exactly as it appears. The code entered at SoundExchange must be character-for-character identical to the one your distributor assigned and delivered to the platforms.

You can submit recordings one at a time by clicking "Add Recording" inside the "Submit Recordings" section of your catalog, or you can use the bulk import option by filling in a spreadsheet template with all your tracks and uploading it at once. For artists with large catalogs, the bulk upload is significantly faster.

Step 4: Search the Unclaimed Royalties Database

This is the step most artists skip, and it may be the most valuable one. SoundExchange maintains a publicly searchable database of unclaimed royalties: money already collected on recordings whose owners have not yet registered or claimed it. You can search this database using your artist name, even before you finish setting up your account.

If your music has played on SiriusXM or Pandora in the past and you were not registered, those royalties did not disappear. They are sitting in a holding pool, waiting to be claimed. Submit a formal claim with supporting documentation, including proof of performance (distributor statements, PRO credits), proof of identity, and your ISRC records. If your claim is validated, SoundExchange will release the held funds to your account.

Search SoundExchange Unclaimed Royalties

Where to Find the Information You Need: ISRCs, ISWCs, and Metadata

One of the practical challenges of submitting your catalog is gathering all the required metadata. You likely have this information spread across multiple platforms and dashboards, so here is where to look for each key piece of data.

Finding Your ISRC

The ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) identifies the master recording and is the most critical piece of data for SoundExchange matching. Find it in your distributor's catalog dashboard next to each track. This is the code you submitted when you first uploaded your music for distribution. It is specific to each individual recording and does not change across different platforms.

Remember: the ISRC must match exactly across your distributor records, your SoundExchange submission, and the platform metadata. Even a single character mismatch can cause plays to come in as unmatched, leaving royalties unattributed and uncollected.

Finding Your ISWC

The ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code) identifies the underlying composition, not the recording. While it is not mandatory for SoundExchange submission, including it improves metadata accuracy. If you have registered your songs with a Performing Rights Organization such as ASCAP or BMI, you can find the ISWC by searching your PRO's public repertoire database using your name or song title. If you have registered through a publishing administrator like Songtrust, the ISWC will also appear in your Songtrust dashboard.

One important caveat: if your recording is a cover of another artist's song, you will not have an ISWC for the composition, because you do not own the underlying publishing rights. In that case, leave that field blank and proceed with the other required fields.

Other Metadata Fields

SoundExchange also asks for the song duration (in hours, minutes, and seconds format), the genre, the country where the recording was made, the first release date, and the name of the sound recording copyright owner (the P-Line holder). Most of this information is available in your distributor's release details or can be verified on the track's Spotify or Apple Music page. The more complete and accurate your metadata, the better your chance of royalties being matched correctly on every play.

Letters of Direction: How Producers and Collaborators Get Paid

If you are a producer, mixer, or creative collaborator on a recording you did not perform on, your path to SoundExchange royalties works differently. You cannot claim directly as a featured artist. Instead, the featured artist on the recording can authorize a portion of their artist share to be redirected to you using a Letter of Direction (LOD).

The LOD is a formal document, using SoundExchange's specific form, in which the featured artist instructs SoundExchange to route a defined percentage of their 45% share to the producer or collaborator. SoundExchange requires the signed LOD form and a repertoire list naming every covered recording, with ISRCs included wherever possible.

If you have collaborated on another artist's project as a featured artist (not as the main recording artist), you may be able to claim royalties directly for your featured appearance. Use the "Search and Claim" function in your SoundExchange catalog to search for the recording by title or ISRC, and submit a claim indicating your role and the basis for your claim. SoundExchange will review and validate it against the registration information already on file for that recording.

SoundExchange vs. Your Other Royalty Organizations

A major source of confusion for independent artists is understanding where SoundExchange fits alongside their PRO, their distributor, and The MLC. These are four separate organizations collecting four distinct royalty streams, and none of them overlaps with or substitutes for the others. Being registered with one does nothing to collect what the others manage.

A self-released songwriter-artist needs all four registrations to collect every royalty stream their music generates.

Notice that your distributor and SoundExchange both cover the sound recording copyright, but for entirely different services and contexts. Your distributor collects when listeners choose to play your song on demand. SoundExchange collects when a non-interactive radio service programs your song for its audience. These are legally separate royalties from separate pools, and they require separate registrations.

What About International Plays?

SoundExchange collects U.S. digital performance royalties. If your recordings receive airplay or public performance outside the United States, that revenue, broadly called neighboring rights, is handled by other countries' collecting organizations. Major ones include PPL in the United Kingdom, GVL in Germany, and SENA in the Netherlands. SoundExchange does maintain reciprocal agreements with some foreign societies, but for most territories, independent artists need to either register directly with those foreign organizations or work with a neighboring rights administrator who handles multiple territories for a commission.

Common Mistakes That Cost Independent Artists Real Money

Even artists who know about SoundExchange frequently make errors during the registration and catalog submission process that result in royalties going uncollected. Here are the most consequential ones, and how to avoid them.

• Registering as only a featured artist when you own your masters. This is the single most common and most costly error. It quietly caps your royalty collection at 45% when you are entitled to 95%. Log in and verify which roles your account holds. If the sound recording copyright owner role is missing, add it immediately at no cost.
• Using an ISRC that does not exactly match your distributor's records. Mismatched or missing ISRCs are the leading cause of unmatched plays and lost royalties. Pull the ISRC directly from your distributor dashboard and copy it character by character. Do not type it from memory or approximate it.
• Not updating your catalog after new releases. Registration is not a one-time event. Every new release needs its ISRC submitted to SoundExchange. Build this step into your release workflow alongside your distributor submission and PRO registration.
• Registering only your stage name or only your legal name. SoundExchange may hold royalties logged under either. Register both names and link them to the same account to ensure nothing slips through.
• Waiting too long to register. Unclaimed royalties do not wait indefinitely. SoundExchange holds unmatched funds for a period of years before redistributing them proportionally to other registered rights holders. The sooner you register and claim, the more of your historical royalties you can recover.
• Skipping the unclaimed royalties search. Many artists register, submit their catalog, and stop there. Searching the unclaimed database is a separate step that can surface royalties already collected in your name from plays that happened before you registered.

Your SoundExchange Registration Checklist

• Registered as Featured Artist
• Registered as Sound Recording Copyright Owner (if you own your masters)
• W-9 or W-8BEN submitted and verified
• Banking details or mailing address on file
• Both legal name and stage name linked to the account
• Every released recording submitted with the correct ISRC
• ISRCs verified against distributor records for exact match
• Unclaimed royalties database searched for your artist name and any aliases
• New releases added to SoundExchange at time of each release

Key Takeaways for Independent Artists

SoundExchange is one of the few royalty organizations that pays independent artists directly, with no label or distributor acting as an intermediary. If you own your masters and your music reaches digital radio audiences, the structure actually favors you significantly over signed artists: you can collect 95% of every royalty generated by your recordings, compared to a signed artist who may receive only the 45% performer share after the label takes the owner portion.

The registration is free, the catalog submission requires information you already have from your distributor, and the unclaimed royalties database may already hold funds earned from plays you did not know were happening. The only cost is the time it takes to set everything up correctly, once, and then maintain it as you release new music.

If you are a songwriter who also performs and self-releases your music, your complete royalty infrastructure requires four registrations working in parallel: your distributor for on-demand streaming revenue, SoundExchange for digital radio performance royalties on your master, your PRO for composition performance royalties, and The MLC for U.S. mechanical royalties on your songs. Each one covers a distinct slice of the total revenue your music can generate, and none of them collects on behalf of the others.

The music industry rarely offers a free, legally protected, direct-to-artist royalty stream with no intermediary taking a cut. SoundExchange is exactly that for the digital radio context. The barrier to entry is not money or connections but simply knowledge and 20 minutes of setup. There is no reason to leave it uncollected.