Understanding Your SoundExchange Reports

One of the streaming benefits for not-for-profit radio stations is the noncommercial webcaster license that SoundExchange offers. While Commercial broadcasters have to pay a $1,000 yearly fee – which essentially acts as a bank for a limited amount of performances at the rate of $0.0021/ performance – the noncommercial webcast license offered at the same $1,000 yearly fee includes 159,140 ATH/TLH per month. If you were a commercial webcaster, that amount of TLH would result in a monthly payment of around $4,300, or $52,000 per year (minus the $1,000 of course).

While many Christian broadcasters will never exceed the 159,140 TLH mark for the month, there are still things you can do to ensure that the reports you are sending are accurate and that you don’t accidentally go over that threshold. Or, if you are at that threshold, there are ways to ensure you don’t pay for performance overages you should not have to. Here are a few tips to make sure you are not only compliant, but not overpaying or over-reporting usage:

1. Ensure your SoundExchange reports are for performances only in the US. I can’t tell you how hard it is to explain to radio stations how they have been overpaying for years due to them not filtering out for the US.
2. Remove all non-music performances and directly licensed music tracks. Oftentimes, if one is not looking closely, they can end up paying performance fees for a sweep or promo.
3. Make sure your ATH is based on active sessions starting at :60 seconds or later. This will eliminate any fraudulent or bot traffic that could add to your ATH/TLH.

It’s always worth asking your streaming provider about these questions. Can they limit performance reports to US only? Can they filter out non-musical performances? Does their ATH/TLH reporting account for active session listening?

If so, this will not only help save you money on your royalty reporting/keep you under your 159,140 ATH limit, but also help save human capital expenses by saving time. I’ve heard with the proper filtering and reporting, performance reports that once took six days to put together are now done in six hours!

Main thing: Stay compliant, but be shrewd in your reporting. It’s worth it – more revenue for the Kingdom and your mission.

Next thing: I do not work for or represent SoundExchange in any way.

Last thing: May God bless you and your radio ministry!

Matt Kellogg is VP of Sales & Business Development at SoundStack, which simplifies audio through the development of platform-agnostic technology for creators and advertisers. matt@soundstack.com