A couple news items in the music industry have struck WordPlay T. Jay recently, including BMI’s payout reports and Spotify’s change allowing podcasters to access their listeners’ emails.

BMI has reported distributing $1.4 billion in royalties to artists, but is all of that money getting where it need to go?

According to T. Jay’s research, not hardly. MLC reported $400 million of that amount is still unclaimed, and globally, the value of all unclaimed royalties is at $2.5 billion.

Who is missing out on that money, and is it you?

T. Jay said the best solution to this issue is to control what you can, namely, signing up for all the agencies you need to collect royalties.

At the very least, sign up with a PRO (like ASCAP or BMI), SoundExchange and the MLC. Use a publishing administrator if you need to.

Another key is to market your music more, and you can lobby your representatives in Congress to increase artists’ royalty rates.

For more help with any of these things, T. Jay offers consultations, which you can book here.

Another news item piquing T. Jay’s interest was Spotify’s allowing podcasters to download subscriber emails. This is kind of a good thing, he said, but it only applies to subscribers who pay for the podcasts with the extra subscriber tier.

T. Jay thinks this should be opened up to everyone, and to musicians, as well.

“Musicians drive traffic to Spotify just the same as podcasters, so why not give them access to their subscribers’ emails?” T. Jay asked. “Spotify would rather you drive traffic to them than to give you a way to communicate with your audience on your own.”

T. Jay suggested finding a way to get your listeners’ or subscribers’ information outside of Spotify to use as a marketing tool.

For more on these issues, check out the video below!