Founder of Digital Music Royalties Collection Group To Leave By Year’s End

WASHINGTON, July 2, 2010 – The founding chief of the United States’ pioneering digital music royalties collection group SoundExchange will step down at the end of the year, the group announced Thursday.

SoundExchange's John Simson will leave his post as the group's founding chief by the end of the year. Picture courtesy of SoundExchange.

“After 10 years of working with digital services, we’ve achieved many of our important goals,” said SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson. “We’ve established fair rates for performers and labels and built the largest performer and recording label society in the world.”

Simson had spent the few years before the creation of the exchange lobbying for the passage of the law that led to its creation. That was the Digital Performance Rights in Sound Recording Act of 1995. He’s also lobbying for royalties to be paid from regular radio performances.

SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects statutory royalties from satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), Internet radio (like Pandora,) cable TV music channels and similar platforms for streaming sound recordings.

The Copyright Royalty Board, appointed by The U.S. Library of Congress, has designated SoundExchange as the sole United States entity that collects and distributes these digital performance royalties on behalf of recording artists, master rights owners (usually record labels), and independent artists who record and own their masters.