US royalties-collecting organisation SoundExchange has hit a new milestone: $7bn of distributions since it was created in 2003. The company passed $5bn of distributions in late 2017, and was thought to have reached $6bn in early 2019.
The news came as SoundExchange announced that its distributions during the first quarter of 2020 were $224m, up 1.5% year-on-year. The firm said that this reflected “swift action taken by the company to maintain monthly distributions to as many as 200,000+ music creators during the Covid-19 pandemic”, with SoundExchange saying it’s on track for continued monthly payments, including its April distribution.
Earlier this year, SoundExchange said its distributions totalled $908.2m in 2019, down 4.7% year-on-year due to the impact of a $150m settlement with SiriusXM the year before. Without that impact, distributions would have grown by 13.1%.
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