So who do you trust with your royalties, anyway? This is a fight that goes way beyond Sirius and SoundExchange, and a major sticking point throughout will be transparency. Which is why Sirius' backend royalty processor just underwent a rigorous auditing process, one designed to further convince labels to switch teams for satellite radio royalty administration.
The company behind the scenes is Music Reports, Inc., which is powering Sirius XM Radio's recent direct licensing initiative with labels. And, they mean business: Music Reports isnow preparing to announce the successful completion of what is known as a 'Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 Audit,' essentially a financial rectal exam of the most thorough variety.
And, they passed, according to details shared with Digital Music News. “Successful completion of the rigorous SSAE 16 audit is further validation of the fact that Music Reports is the clear choice among service providers for companies whose businesses rely on the effective management of music rights with complete transparency and security," explained Doug Brainin, Music Reports president and CEO.
The reasons for this move are obvious. If Sirius is sending letters to labels to directly collect and administer their royalties, it helps to know that the company doing the work is clean. But there's also a very overt jab at SoundExchange, a group that routinely finds itself on the defensive over considerable unpaid royalty tranches, confusing royalty payment systems, and messy issues like bad metadata and unregistered artists.
Actually, SoundExchange does have an independent auditor: PricewaterhouseCoopers. But a lot of this messiness goes beyond auditing. For starters, Music Reports and Sirius are hoping to bypass a complicated system that involves direct payments to artists, which quickly lowers the number of payees but also reintroduces another very messy problem: labels themselves.
And here's where things get really dirty. All too frequently, labels are caught red-handed bilking their own artists. But history has also shown a near-systematic refusal to compensate artists at some labels, a problem that isn't just restricted to the majors. And most of these labels aren't exactly undergoing rigorous, self-administered audits, to say the least.
The company behind the scenes is Music Reports, Inc., which is powering Sirius XM Radio's recent direct licensing initiative with labels. And, they mean business: Music Reports isnow preparing to announce the successful completion of what is known as a 'Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 Audit,' essentially a financial rectal exam of the most thorough variety.
And, they passed, according to details shared with Digital Music News. “Successful completion of the rigorous SSAE 16 audit is further validation of the fact that Music Reports is the clear choice among service providers for companies whose businesses rely on the effective management of music rights with complete transparency and security," explained Doug Brainin, Music Reports president and CEO.
The reasons for this move are obvious. If Sirius is sending letters to labels to directly collect and administer their royalties, it helps to know that the company doing the work is clean. But there's also a very overt jab at SoundExchange, a group that routinely finds itself on the defensive over considerable unpaid royalty tranches, confusing royalty payment systems, and messy issues like bad metadata and unregistered artists.
Actually, SoundExchange does have an independent auditor: PricewaterhouseCoopers. But a lot of this messiness goes beyond auditing. For starters, Music Reports and Sirius are hoping to bypass a complicated system that involves direct payments to artists, which quickly lowers the number of payees but also reintroduces another very messy problem: labels themselves.
And here's where things get really dirty. All too frequently, labels are caught red-handed bilking their own artists. But history has also shown a near-systematic refusal to compensate artists at some labels, a problem that isn't just restricted to the majors. And most of these labels aren't exactly undergoing rigorous, self-administered audits, to say the least.
