US collecting body SoundExchange is under fire, after trade site Digital Music News analysed its tax returns, and found $200 million sitting in its account, unpaid to artists. The company has defended itself to Wired, claiming that 50% of the cash was just ‘workflow’ – recent payments that were on their way out to artists at the time the accounts were analysed. It says a further 11% if being held up by pending court rulings on rates or related issues; 5% is due to foreign performing rights bodies who haven’t claimed it yet, 10% was paid by music services with no playlist data to help SoundExchange assign it to artists, and 5% was paid by music services with incomplete data. And the rest? That’s for artists who haven’t yet registered with the service – hence its current campaign to get people to register. Source: Wired Epicenter
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