SoundExchange has just announced its Q2 2018 results, and the results are up. The company revealed more than $208.7 million in payments to registered artists and labels for the quarter ending June 30th. That payout is up 17.5% from the same period last year, which generated $177.6 million in royalties. During the first half of 2018, the company paid out $398.6 million to music rights holders from royalties on music streaming services like Pandora and Sirius XM Radio. That number is also up 17.4% from the previous year, which saw $339.5 million in royalties distributed to rights owners. The combined figure of nearly $400 million during the first half of 2018 has outperformed payouts in 2014 and 2015. But the payout is less than 2016’s numbers — though that makes sense given that Pandora started inking independent deals with recording labels during that year. SoundExchange’s membership also continues to expand. According to this quarter’s financial report, the company represents 28,065 individual rights holders for the period. That’s a 9.3% increase in the number of represented holders from the previous year. Additionally, new registrants for the company’s services are up 3.4% year-over-year, with 9,390 new registrations for the second quarter. Traditionally, both have been sore spots for the company, with holding tranches often in the hundreds of millions. Executive salaries are also getting more attention, in particular CEO Michael Huppe’s annual salary of more than $1 million. Those payouts are happening despite broader issues — including declines over the past two years. Those issues could be impacting the success (or lack thereof) of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). Rumors continue to point to a ‘no-bid contract’ awaiting SoundExchange, specifically to fulfill the duties of a government-controlled Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). Just recently, Blackstone Group, owner of mechanical licensing group Harry Fox Agency, protested the seemingly rigged selection process. The company will continue to collect royalties for non-interactive streaming on services like Pandora and SiriusXM. Any digital music rights holder or artist can register with the service to begin collecting streaming royalties. SoundExchange holds the royalties collected before rights holders enroll in its services to be distributed after registration. The company was originally spun-off from the RIAA to be a non-profit collective rights management organization.
Despite significant pull-outs from Michael Huppe , parent Blackstone Group 's H1 royalty payments increased 17.5% , YoY. The company's Q2 results showed it made $177.6m m in payments to artists and rights holders, up from $208.7 a year earlier . The music streaming service also saw its membership expand, with the number of represented rights owners rising 17.5% to 28,065 in the three months through June .