Metadata And Money: On Background Vocalists and Session Musicians

Most independent artists do not know that 5% of their digital radio master royalties earned in the United States from the likes of Pandora, SiriusXM, Music Choice, iHeartRadio, Slacker, TuneIn, Last.fm, etc. are automatically allocated to a pool that is to be paid out to background vocalists and session musicians.

This money is allocated, *even if there are no background vocalists and sessions musicians on the record,* and are paid out in the United States by AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund (aka “The Fund”).

Knowing this now, what should you do?

1. Invite musician friends to perform background vocals or an instrument on your record.
2. Invite the producer of the record to add background vocals or live instrumentation to their production (then, the producer would be able to qualify for these royalties; which is separate from his/her other producer royalties).

It is important to know that if you have background vocalists or session musicians on your record you MUST PUBLISH THE TRACK CREDITS! The Fund does track credit research to identify the individuals entitled to these royalties. THERE IS NO REGISTRATION PROCESS. They look for credits at places like AllMusic.com, Discogs, MusicBrainz, etc.

Don’t let your royalties go undistributed.

Get 👏 it 👏 done.

TuneRegistry, we deliver track credits to TiVo, which supplies data to AllMusic.com. We also deliver metadata and audio fingerprints to Gracenote, Audible Magic, Medianet, ACRCloud, Quantone, Exactuals – RAI, and Crunch Digital. These services power search and discovery features in hundreds of music apps, websites, audio devices, and smart speakers around the world.