You've got music on streaming platforms, you signed up for SoundExchange, and you figured you were covered. The thing is, SoundExchange registration is more layered than most artists realize — and the mistakes that cost the most money aren't about forgetting to sign up. They're about signing up the wrong way. A missing designation here, an unregistered back catalog there, and royalties get held, sent to the wrong party, or sit in an unclaimed pool for years before they disappear.
This isn't a guide to signing up from scratch. If you need that, there's a step-by-step registration walkthrough here. This is for artists who are already registered — or think they are — and want to know whether their setup is actually correct.
SoundExchange Isn't a PRO — and That Distinction Matters More Than You Think
Before getting into the mistakes, it helps to be clear on what SoundExchange actually collects, because a lot of artists conflate it with their PRO (ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC).
Your PRO collects performance royalties on your compositions — the underlying song, the melody and lyrics. SoundExchange collects digital performance royalties on your sound recordings — the actual recorded track. These are two separate royalty streams from the same play on Pandora or SiriusXM, and you need both registrations to capture both payments.
PRO royalties go to the songwriter and their publisher. SoundExchange royalties go to the featured artist and the sound recording copyright owner. For most independent artists who own their masters, that's you in both cases — but only if you've registered correctly in each role. Here's a deeper breakdown of how digital royalties split across SoundExchange, ASCAP, and BMI.
Mistake #1: Registering Only as a Performer (Not as a Sound Recording Copyright Owner)
This is the single most common SoundExchange mistake, and it's expensive.
SoundExchange distributes royalties in two separate pools for every recording that gets played on a qualifying platform. Fifty percent goes to the featured artist (the performer). The other fifty percent goes to the sound recording copyright owner — the person or entity that owns the master recording.
When you record music independently and release it yourself, you typically own your masters. That means you're entitled to both pools. But many independent artists only register under one category — usually Featured Artist — because that's the most visible option during signup. The SRCO registration requires a separate step, and a lot of artists skip it without realizing it costs them half their SoundExchange money.
If you've been registered for a while and you're not sure whether you're registered in both capacities, log into your SoundExchange account and check. If you're only listed as a performer, you need to add a sound recording copyright owner profile. Any royalties that have been accumulating in the owner pool under your recording will still be there, waiting to be matched — but only if you claim them before the holding period expires.
Mistake #2: Ignoring Royalties Held in Your Name Before You Registered
SoundExchange doesn't just start collecting for you the day you sign up. It has been tracking plays on qualifying digital radio platforms all along. When a sound recording generates royalties but the artist isn't a registered member, SoundExchange holds those funds. The standard holding period is three years.
What this means: if you had music on Pandora, SiriusXM, or any SoundExchange-affiliated platform before you registered, there may be money already sitting in a holding account with your name on it. Registering now lets you claim it — but most artists don't know to look for it, so they assume their account starts from zero.
When you register (or if you're already registered), check the "Non-Member Registration" lookup on the SoundExchange site to see if royalties have been logged for your works. You can also search by artist name or track title. If funds show up, you'll need to complete a claim process to link them to your registered account.
This is one of the most concrete examples of how unclaimed royalties accumulate invisibly — the money is real, it's trackable, and it goes away after the holding period if no one claims it.
Mistake #3: Getting the Featured vs. Non-Featured Artist Designation Wrong
If you've ever performed on someone else's track as a guest vocalist or session musician, you may be owed non-featured artist royalties through SoundExchange.
SoundExchange sets aside a pool specifically for non-featured performers — backup vocalists, session musicians, and others who performed on a recording but aren't the primary credited artist. These royalties don't go through the featured artist or the SRCO — they're distributed through the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund. If you've done session or feature work and you're not registered there, that money either goes unclaimed or gets distributed into a general fund.
On the flip side, if you are the featured artist on your own recordings, make sure your tracks are clearly designated as such. When SoundExchange receives play data and tries to match it to registered members, ambiguous or inconsistent metadata can cause mismatches. Metadata errors are one of the most persistent causes of lost royalties across every collection body, and SoundExchange is no exception.
Mistake #4: Only Registering New Releases (Not Your Back Catalog)
A common pattern: an artist hears about SoundExchange, signs up, and registers the EP they just dropped. The three albums from the past five years? Never added.
Every sound recording you've ever released on a SoundExchange-covered platform is eligible for digital performance royalties. Pandora and SiriusXM don't restrict their playlists to new music — older tracks with continued streams or radio spins generate royalties the same way current releases do. If those recordings aren't in your SoundExchange catalog, the royalties from plays of those tracks can't be matched to your account.
SoundExchange does have an automated matching system that can sometimes identify and hold royalties for unregistered works — but that only works when they have enough data to identify you as the rights holder. Manual registration is more reliable, especially for artists with catalog depth.
Go through your full discography and make sure every release you own the master to is registered. It's tedious, but it's one-time work that pays back permanently.
Mistake #5: Outdated Banking and Contact Information
SoundExchange sends payments by ACH or check. If your bank account has changed, you've moved, or you've shifted to operating under an LLC or label name and haven't updated your SoundExchange account to reflect it, payments get returned. Returned checks eventually get reclassified as unmatched funds. Enough of that and money that was rightfully yours cycles back into the general pool.
This is especially easy to overlook for artists who registered years ago and haven't thought about it since. SoundExchange doesn't chase you down every time a payment bounces — it's on you to keep your account current. If you haven't logged in recently, it's worth a quick check to confirm your payment details are still accurate.
How to Know If You've Made Any of These Mistakes
If you've been releasing music for more than a year, there's a real chance at least one of these issues applies to your catalog. The problem is that most of them are invisible — you're not getting error notices or rejection emails. The royalties just go unclaimed, quietly, until the holding period ends.
Going through this yourself is doable if your catalog is small. But if you have more than a handful of releases, or if you've been releasing music for several years and have never done a systematic check, doing it by hand is slow and easy to get wrong. SoundExchange is one piece of a larger picture that also includes your PRO registrations, The MLC for mechanical royalties, and any publishing admin you have in place. PRO registration has its own set of mistakes that often compound the SoundExchange issues — a misregistered work at ASCAP or BMI frequently means misregistered metadata everywhere else, too.
A catalogue audit looks at your full release history across all the relevant collection bodies, identifies what's unregistered, misregistered, or actively accumulating unclaimed funds, and gives you a clear picture of what you're missing and what to do about it. If you're releasing independently and you've never had your catalog systematically reviewed, it's worth knowing what's actually there.
Learn more about the catalogue audit service — pricing starts at $497.