It's not unusual to hear artists griping about not receiving their royalties on a timely basis. The idea of a royalties organization hounding artists to come collect their cash, however, is pretty unheard of.
Yet that's exactly what's happening in England, where the U.K. Collecting Society PPL is hunting down Justin Timberlake, the Backstreet Boys, Jessica Simpson, Nickelback, Prince and many other artists to pay them airplay royalties.
Currently, the society owes at least $450,000 to American musicians and songwriters, a spokesperson for the organization said. More than 25,000 artists have registered for royalties, but more than 5,000 of them, including the aforementioned as well as Aretha Franklin, Lou Reed, Don Felder, Donna Summer, Ice-T and Salt-N-Pepa, have not yet applied to receive what's owed to them. The main reason for this is because airplay royalties work differently in the U.K. than in the U.S., and many acts are unaware they're owed cash.
In the United States, ASCAP and BMI distribute airplay royalties to an artist's publishing company, which distributes the money to the songwriter. In England, any musician who played on a track that was commissioned or written in Europe, Australia or Canada is eligible for payments from a group known as POS. To receive royalties, musicians must fill out a Collecting Society application and provide a copy of their identification.
The spokesperson for the society wasn't allowed to specify how much individual artists are owed, but revealed that a single spin on a major radio station in England would yield between $30 and $45 in airplay royalties. Half of that goes to the label, but with a big hit, an artist can accumulate dozens of spins per day per station, and that adds up.
The law allowing musicians to receive U.K. airplay payments went into effect in 1996, and for the past six months the Collecting Society has been contacting managers and labels to notify them what their artists are owed. The Society started campaigning in the U.S. at last year's South by Southwest convention in Austin, Texas, and will make an appearance in New York on October 21 at the City Conference at the Maritime Hotel.
According to U.K. law, an artist's right to airplay royalties expires seven years after the money was first collected by the Society. However, the organization has not yet exempted any acts from owed royalties. Unclaimed money is put into a bank account where it earns interest until it is collected. Musicians who have performed on a track that has received U.K. airplay can visit www.royaltiesreunited.co.uk to see if they are owed airplay royalties.
