That’s right. If you’re a Christian artist in 2023 and you have little to no knowledge about SDARS royalties, how to track them, as well as collect them, then there’s a chance that you just gave the Champagne Papi more money to put in the grave when he dies.

That one probably flew over the heads of some saints.

You’re probably wondering how that’s even possible. Especially if you’re not a huge Drake fan, let alone a consumer of mainstream music. I got a chance to have a chat with Guillaume [ghee-om] Drouin [dr-oo-ih-n], the owner of ShineX, who has created a system that instantly tracks your songs on satellite radio and calculates your SDARS royalties. And please don’t sleep on this information. Because while you’re fighting for a spot on a Spotify playlist just to make a FRACTION of a dollar, the SiriusXM payout rate is around 11,000 times more than what you’re earning on Spotify. Sounds like fabrication and exaggeration but allow some elaboration.

Leaving Money On The Turntables

Depending on whether or not your music is being spun on a SiriusXM radio station, you could potentially be leaving YOUR money on the turntables. See what I did there? 

If you don’t know where your song is being played, how much it’s generating, and how to collect those earnings, you are losing out. I don’t know about you, but I need every red cent in this current economy. Ain’t no way I’m giving Ice Spice and her baddie friends money from MY art.

SiriusXM has a gross revenue of around $8 billion. By law, they are required to pay 15.5% of these gross earnings to SoundExchange every month. So they’re giving about $1 billion to SoundExchange annually to be divided amongst 110 channels. SoundExchange then distributes all of this money amongst the registered artists, which pays $40-$50 per spin. 

Now imagine being a starving artist, and once you decide to put a halt to your music career, you get this $50,000 check. Well, ShineX owner Guillaume experienced this for himself. He shared, “I was a former artist, and once I stopped playing music I got a check for $50,000 from SoundExchange. So then I started managing my lead singer’s career and took an interest in SoundExchange. I was trying to understand why it paid so much.” 

Then he followed up with the breakdown that you read at the beginning of this section. 

He also mentioned, “There was this artist in Canada who was going on tour, and the tour got canceled. Then her husband’s tour also got canceled. She was really worried about how they were going to cover their bills and pay for things… during that time, I was able to help her find $40,000 in unpaid royalties which was insane!”

You could just imagine how many artists are leaving money behind that they’ll never have access to retrieve again. By the way, there’s a system and window to claim these royalties.

Drake and Three Other Dead Guys

SoundExchange keeps the money for three years. Unclaimed royalties goes to the proration of whoever plays the most vs who plays the least. So whoever’s music is spinning the most on SiriusXM for that year, they get a certain percentage of whatever money YOU left on the table. And then the further along down the hierarchy you are, the smaller your cut from that prorated amount will be. Now the likelihood of you getting one of those prorated checks is slim. If you’re a smaller artist that is… If you’re an artist who is tapping into the top of SiriusXM spins, then you’ll probably see one of those checks. If not, Drake and 3 other dead people are taking your money.

Yeah that’s right. In the past Drake, Elvis, and the Beatles have been at the top of the SiriusXM charts for radio spins, so you know what that means!

Christian Artists – Get Your Songs On Sirius!

Before I give you free game on how to collect these royalties and best practices, I can’t go on without highlighting how beneficial and almost time-sensitive this is. 

“Get your songs on Sirius; Sirius can make you a living…” said the ShineX platform owner. “Christian hip hop is an underrepresented genre. Christian hip-hop artists need to put their songs on Sirius. Holy Culture is a great channel to do that.”  He then introduced the blue ocean strategy and, in his own words, stated, “Blue ocean is something that hasn’t been abused or doesn’t have a lot of competitors.”

Right now, getting your music on SiriusXM through a platform like Holy Culture is akin to being in a blue ocean.  Just like the depths of the ocean blue, there’s a vast and wide amount of opportunity to generate income, and there’s not a ton of competition. This could change over time as word gets out. Meanwhile, solely relying on your typical streaming platforms like Apple or Spotify to generate just a fraction of a penny is a bloody crimson war. A red ocean. There’s blood and competition everywhere. Guillaume implies, “To get real money, you have to get thousands and thousands of streams.” But, with a decent amount of radio spins, you can have consistent income.

For example, 250 radio spins = $10,000.

AT LEAST $10,000 due to fluctuations in the market, so it could be more. Another story for another day.

To obtain $10,000 from a platform like Spotify, you’d have to generate AT LEAST 3.3 million streams. 

250 spins vs. 3.3 million streams. 

In this digital age, artists have to almost consistently rely on landing multiple playlist placements to touch the hem of 100k streams. Not to mention that that doesn’t even guarantee fans will return. But aside from all of that, obtaining those kinds of numbers isn’t impossible, but it’s definitely not easy.

If one of your songs were to play on Sirius once a day for the entire year, you’ve just added at least $14k to your income for that year. Emphasis on the at least. Don’t forget about that market fluctuation. Some artists have multiple songs on the radio playing all year long, generating “quit your day job” type of money. 

I feel like you get the picture now. 

This isn’t some sort of hoax or get-rich-quick scheme. This is money that YOU own by law. What you do with this information is now up to YOU. 

Royalty Collection

As stated before, get your music on SiriusXM as well as find out if you already have music being played on their platform. You might be a featured artist on a song that’s already been spun or a station’s DJ may have picked you up and placed you in their rotation. 

1. Properly register your catalog with SoundExchange.
2. Go to shinexmonitoring.com and enter your artist/producer name in the search bar to see if you’re already in rotation. Regardless of if you are or not, you’re going to want to sign up. ShineX has a system in place to track your SDARS from Sirius and your expected payout from SoundExchange. They currently offer a two-week free trial which follows up with an optional 15-minute call with the CEO himself. I highly recommend taking that call; Guillame is super helpful and can answer any questions that you have about the service he provides through ShineX.
3. Submit your music to stations like Holy Culture Radio.

Free Game

One piece of free game from Guillaume came in the form of a precaution:

“Be careful with direct licensing with Sirius… Make sure that all collected royalties generated from SiriusXM come from SoundExchange and not Sirius with a direct license. Some distributors will say that you will get more money back by using a direct license, but that’s only for certain stations, special cases, and isn’t guaranteed. There have been scenarios where artists will bypass SoundExchange to collect their Holy Culture royalties, and their check was supposed to be $10k, but they ended up only being able to collect $500. And there is no way to get that money back once the check has been cut.”

All in all, I hope the next time you see a blog headlining with Drake or Ice Spice’s face as the cover, you think about the money you could be leaving on the turntables to add to their lifestyles.

Get some other key artist tips here!