Neighbouring Rights.
If your music gets played on radio, in a venue, or on non-interactive streaming services like SiriusXM, you are owed money on top of your DSP streaming royalties. That money is collected by a different set of organisations — the ones you'll read about below — and element59 is not one of them. This page exists because we want you to register with the right body so the money actually reaches you.
Read this once, then go register. The five-minute version: if you're UK-based register with PPL. If you're US-based register with SoundExchange. If you're somewhere else, find your local society via the CISAC member directory. element59 will never collect these on your behalf.
What neighbouring rights are
▷ In one sentence: Royalties paid to performers and recording rightsholders when a recording is played in public — distinct from songwriting royalties and distinct from the DSP streaming income we already pay you.
There are three pots of money in recorded music, and they get confused all the time:
1. Master / recording royalties. The money DSPs (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) pay for on-demand streams. element59 collects these for you through our aggregator partner and pays them to your Stripe Connect account. If you've signed up here, this part is already handled.
2. Publishing / mechanical / performance royalties on the composition. The money songwriters and publishers earn whenever the underlying composition is reproduced or performed. Collected by PROs (PRS, ASCAP, BMI, GEMA, etc.) and mechanical-rights agencies (MLC, MCPS). element59 does not collect these. A separate publishing administrator does — see our Publishing page when that lands.
3. Neighbouring rights. The money paid to the performers on a recording and to the recording rightsholder when that recording is played in public — broadcast on radio or TV, played on non-interactive streaming, or performed in venues, bars, retail spaces. Collected by societies known as CMOs (collective management organisations). element59 does not collect these. That's what this page is about.
The reason neighbouring rights are split off from regular streaming royalties is historical and statutory. Under the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, performers and recording producers have a right to "equitable remuneration" for public performance and broadcast that is collected centrally by national societies, not by individual labels or distributors. To collect on this you have to be a member of the relevant society in each territory where your music is played.
Who collects them where
▷ In one sentence: PPL in the UK, SoundExchange in the US, GVL / SCPP / SACEM and dozens of others elsewhere — registration with each is free and is something the artist does directly.
United Kingdom — [PPL](https://www.ppluk.com). Collects from UK radio, TV, public-performance venues, and from streaming services on the recording side (separate from PRS for Music's writer-side collection). Registration is free for performers, recording rightsholders, and labels. PPL has reciprocal agreements with sister societies in 100+ territories, so registering once with PPL pulls in money you're owed in many other countries automatically. If you're a UK artist or have UK radio airplay, this is the single most important box to tick.
United States — [SoundExchange](https://www.soundexchange.com). Collects digital-performance royalties from non-interactive streaming services in the US — SiriusXM satellite radio, Pandora's free tier, internet radio webcasters, and certain background-music services. SoundExchange does not collect from on-demand streaming (that's already in your DSP royalties) and does not collect from terrestrial AM/FM radio (the US is the only major market that doesn't pay performers for terrestrial broadcast — yes, this is a long-standing oddity). Registration is free for both featured artists and rightsholders.
Everywhere else. Each country has its own neighbouring-rights society. Examples: GVL (Germany), SCPP / SPPF (France), AIE (Spain), JIPC (Japan), SCAPR-affiliated societies in scores of other markets. The simplest way to find yours is the CISAC member directory — CISAC is the international confederation of authors and composers societies and maintains a complete index.
Find your local CMO via CISAC →
If you've registered with PPL, many overseas territories will be picked up automatically through PPL's reciprocal network. If you're a non-UK, non-US artist with significant local airplay, registering with your home-country society in addition is usually the right move.
Why element59 does not collect these
▷ In one sentence: Holding artist neighbouring-rights royalties would make us a CMO under the EU Collective Rights Management Directive, and we are very deliberately not that.
Becoming a CMO triggers a stack of regulatory weight that is not appropriate for a music distribution platform at our scale:
- EU Directive 2014/26/EU sets governance, audit, transparency, and member-voting requirements for any organisation collecting and redistributing rights revenue on behalf of multiple rightsholders. Compliance is a multi-year programme. - Bilateral agreements between societies in different territories take years to negotiate, and our scale wouldn't justify them. - Trust-account structures for held member funds carry their own audit and licensing regime separate from our regular ledger.
The right answer at our size is to point you at the existing societies that have already done all of that, and to make registration as frictionless as possible. We surface the registration step in onboarding, we'll add a coverage check once we strike a partnership with PPL for ISRC lookups, and we'll never charge you a percentage on neighbouring-rights money — because we'll never see it. It goes from the broadcaster or platform to the society to you.
What we do track
▷ In one sentence: Whether you've told us you're registered, with which society, and your member ID — used only to nudge you back if you skipped registration and (later) to check ISRC coverage.
When you tell us during onboarding "I'm registered with PPL" and (optionally) provide your PPL member ID, we store a NeighbouringRightsRegistration row tied to your account. That row is:
- Pure metadata. No money is attached to it. - Used to skip the nudge. If you've told us you're registered, we won't keep asking. - Used by a future ISRC-coverage cron. Once PPL grants us API access (currently we have none — see the dormant cron:ppl-isrc-coverage-check job), we'll periodically check whether your tracks are showing up in PPL's repertoire and email you if any are missing. Until then, the cron logs a placeholder metric and does nothing else. - Cascaded with your account. If you delete your account, this row is removed.
You can update or remove a registration at any time from the account settings page (settings UI for this lands in a follow-up; until then, contact hello@element59.com). The member ID is treated as PII-adjacent — never displayed in non-admin operator surfaces, never sent to any third party.
What this page does not say
▷ In one sentence: This is a pointer, not legal advice — talk to a music lawyer or your local society if anything below is unclear for your situation.
This page is information, not legal counsel. Neighbouring-rights regimes vary by territory, and the exact entitlements depend on contributor type (featured artist vs non-featured / session musician), recording date, country of fixation, and treaty status. If you're unsure whether you qualify, ask the relevant society directly — every CMO listed above runs a free helpdesk for new and prospective members.
If you're a session musician or non-featured performer, the AFM-AFTRA Fund (US) and PPL's non-featured-performer pool (UK) handle payments separately from featured-artist registration; the registration links above route you through the right form for your role.