Simson has spoken publicly about the challenge posed by poor reporting by the digital services which use sound recordings. During this quarter, however, SoundExchange staff have worked with registrants to resolve thousands of entries reported as "label unknown" or attributed incorrectly, by encouraging owners and artists to claim the tracks individually. SoundExchange staff also put in many man-hours of research to correct data so that funds could be distributed properly.

The independent label community received its largest-ever portion of digital revenues this quarter. Many individual recipients received their largest checks to date.

"In this time of shrinking revenues from so many other sources, our SoundExchange income was large enough to have paid the production costs of a new album and more," said Bruce Iglauer, owner/operator of Alligator Records, "Absolutely every label and every recording artist should be a member. It's simply all positives and no negatives."

Simson also credited his organization's outreach to artists who had not previously received royalties with a portion of the growth. When artists and copyright holders register with SoundExchange, they receive lump sums of the royalties they have accrued since 1996. A flood of new registrations, fueled by SoundExchange's ramped-up awareness efforts in mid-2009, meant lots of those checks were issued in Q1.

"We're extremely proud of what we do here," Simson said of the quarter's achievements, "It's a challenge and a privilege to be a part of the process that sees the creators of music fairly paid for their invaluable work."

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