As MTP readers will know, Sirius XM is in the middle of a land grab, what one might call reverse “payola”–Sirius wants to gut SoundExchange and subvert artist rights by a not so implied threat of no airplay if independent artists or independent labels don’t give them a direct deal. Meaning that the artist’s share of webcasting royalties won’t be paid to the artist but instead to the label and at that it will be paid at a lower rate.
Now we don’t know but can guess what the connection is between Sirius and Google. So it comes as no surprise that a search for “soundexchange” on Google buries SoundExchange.com down about 5 or 6 pages of results.
The same search on Bing or Yahoo makes Soundexchange.com Number 1.
As Senator Mike Lee told Eric Schmidt at the recent hearing of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, they’re cooking the books.
Music Technology Policy 