Loony House Production

Loony House Production Music Distribution & Music Production

SoundExchange is probably holding money with your name on it. Not because anyone stole it — because nobody filed a form....
09/12/2026

SoundExchange is probably holding money with your name on it. Not because anyone stole it — because nobody filed a form.

It collects digital performance royalties for SOUND RECORDINGS: satellite radio, webcasts, non-interactive streaming. Not Spotify on-demand. Not publishing. And your distributor doesn’t collect it for you by default — even when it offers collection, it usually registers you as the rights owner, leaving the featured-artist share unclaimed.

The split is 45% featured artist / 50% rights owner / 5% non-featured performers via the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund. Which means: if you own your masters, you’re owed TWO separate shares — about 95% — and most independent artists register for one and forfeit the other half. If you’re signed, the 45% still comes to you directly, not through your label.

Producers: your points pay you nothing here. Zero. The only route is a Letter of Direction signed by the featured artist — and it carves out of THEIR 45%, not the label’s 50%. Which is why that conversation belongs at the session, not two years later when the artist has new management and a new email.

Two details that cost real money: LODs aren’t retroactive unless the LOD says so, and without an effective date SoundExchange can’t implement it at all.

Swipe for what an LOD needs, why you haven’t been paid yet, and the checklist. Save it. →

Not legal or financial advice.

RIAA mid-year 2026: US recorded music revenue hit ~$6B, up 6.9%. Streaming is $4.9B — 82% of everything. And it grew 4.7...
09/10/2026

RIAA mid-year 2026: US recorded music revenue hit ~$6B, up 6.9%. Streaming is $4.9B — 82% of everything. And it grew 4.7%, while CDs grew 58.6%, physical 25.9% and sync 18.2%.

Before anyone posts «streaming is dying»: 4.7% of $4.7B added roughly $220M to the US industry. That’s more than the ENTIRE CD category is worth ($171M). Percentages without a base are decoration.

The line nobody quotes: downloads fell 12.7%. Not everything outside streaming is growing. «Diversify» doesn’t mean «add every format.»

The actual takeaway isn’t «CDs are back.» It’s that one recording can live in several economies — stream, CD, vinyl, collector’s edition, film, advertising, games, catalog — and most independent artists judge all of it by one number: play count.

Two honest warnings. National category growth creates zero demand for YOUR record — without an audience that wants to own it, a box of CDs is a storage cost with artwork on it. And sync rewards clearability more than it rewards the music: a great track with a murky rights chain loses to a decent one that can be cleared this afternoon.

Swipe for the demand test, the sync-ready checklist and the catalog audit.

Suno just rebuilt its AI models on licensed music — and switched off everything that came before. The product upgrade is...
09/09/2026

Suno just rebuilt its AI models on licensed music — and switched off everything that came before. The product upgrade isn’t the story.

On Sept 9 it launched three v6 models built with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. In court, Suno had defended training its old models on essentially any usable music on the open web as fair use. Those models are now being retired — and that retirement was written into Warner’s November 2025 settlement. v6 is a contract coming due.

The shift: scrape first, argue later → permission, licence, revenue share.

But read the word «opt-in» carefully, because it’s doing two jobs. Opting into the coming remix and likeness products is genuinely your choice. Whether your recordings were in the training set was decided by your label under a licensing agreement. If you’re signed, that one may already be answered.

And nobody is disclosing the numbers. Suno won’t say how many songs, whose tracks, or how compensation is calculated. Warner won’t say how big the licensed catalog was — or whether artists could opt OUT.

«Creators will be compensated» is a principle, not a royalty statement.

The lawsuits also didn’t stop: UMG, Sony, a Jason Isbell class action, SOCAN, Round Hill, and a German court already ruled for GEMA in July.

Swipe for the three questions to ask and the five permissions that shouldn’t be one checkbox. →

crewport.io

Your lyrics don’t travel inside your audio file. That’s why the same song can show correct words on one platform, nothin...
09/04/2026

Your lyrics don’t travel inside your audio file. That’s why the same song can show correct words on one platform, nothing on another, and a draft you submitted during mixing on a third.

Musixmatch launched Pro for Labels on Sept 2 — catalog audit, sync, translations, distribution, promo assets, with three production routes (DIY, AI draft, or paid curators). Genuinely useful if you’re managing a real catalog.

Two honest caveats though. Label pricing isn’t public, and the adoption numbers going around (400+ beta labels, 1,000+ on Pro) are company figures with no independent evaluation of time saved. Ask for roster limits, curator charges, seats, term, export and cancellation before you sign anything.

And if you’re small: Spotify says a verified Musixmatch account on the FREE plan is enough to add, edit and sync lyrics. Apple Music for Artists takes direct submissions. Scale is the argument for a paid hub — not a secret algorithm.

Three things nobody checks: sync separately from words (a perfect transcript half a beat late still looks cheap), rights before translation (a translation is a derivative work — owning the master isn’t owning the words), and the claim that lyrics boost streams (no published proof; people who study lyrics were probably already stronger fans).

Swipe for the workflow. Save it. →

crewport.io

Beatport Hype costs $9.99/month. Here’s what it actually buys — and the fine print almost nobody quotes.It buys ONE guar...
08/29/2026

Beatport Hype costs $9.99/month. Here’s what it actually buys — and the fine print almost nobody quotes.

It buys ONE guarantee: Beatport’s curators will listen to your label’s releases. Everything else works in levels. Hype Top 100 charts and reserved home/genre zones — you become ELIGIBLE for those. Features, editorial, Label of the Month, playlists — those are “solely at Beatport’s discretion,” in Beatport’s own words. $9.99 does not buy placement.

Eligibility: up to, but NOT more than, $25,000 in Beatport sales in the trailing year from signup. Exactly $25k still qualifies. Cross it and Beatport can remove you from the platform at the end of that subscription month.

And $25k isn’t a loophole — Beatport can disqualify any label that “does not fit the spirit of this program,” its own example being an established artist launching a new imprint for their own project. It can also lower the threshold for certain genres.

Two more things labels miss: only releases from the last 365 days chart (subscribing doesn’t revive your back catalogue), and there’s no pause — fees are non-refundable, cancellation hits at the next renewal.

Swipe for the signup steps, the eligible genres, and exactly what Beatport calls a good pitch versus a bad one. Save it. →

crewport.io

YouTube quietly changed what a “view” is — and every music campaign report you write from now on is affected.Since Aug 2...
08/27/2026

YouTube quietly changed what a “view” is — and every music campaign report you write from now on is affected.

Since Aug 24, a public view counts from the FIRST FRAME. Autoplay while someone hovers a thumbnail? Counted. A Short flashing past in the feed? Counted. One rule now covers Shorts, regular videos, podcasts and live.

The old metric didn’t disappear — it’s called “engaged views” and it’s in Analytics under Advanced Mode. That’s the one that matters, because Partner Program earnings still run on engaged views and engaged watch hours. A bigger public number pays you nothing extra.
The trap: old totals were NOT recalculated. So 80K before the change vs 110K after is not a 37.5% improvement — those were measured by different rules. Your July video and your September video aren’t on the same scale.

What to report instead: engaged views, watch time, retention (where exactly did they leave — the intro? verse two?), unique viewers, subscribers gained, traffic sources. And if you’re buying views from an agency, ask how “view” is defined in the contract — YouTube’s counter, Google Ads and agency billing may not describe the same event.

Swipe for the full reporting checklist. Save it before your next campaign wrap. →

crewport.io

SoundCloud is testing direct sales — fans buy the file right on your profile, and the platform takes 0% commission. Beta...
08/27/2026

SoundCloud is testing direct sales — fans buy the file right on your profile, and the platform takes 0% commission. Beta is 200 US Artist Pro accounts, wider access planned for the fall.

Two things before you get excited. First: 0% commission is not 100% of the price. Processing fees, sales tax/VAT, currency conversion, refunds, withholding and the Artist Pro subscription all still come out. SoundCloud removed ITS cut, not every cost.

Second, and bigger: nobody buys a file they already stream. The MP3 that’s on Spotify isn’t a product. What sells is a reason — a WAV a DJ can load tonight, an 8-minute club mix that isn’t on streaming, an instrumental, a live version. Sell the extra, keep the standard release where people find you. Don’t pull music off streaming to force sales.

And the part nobody mentions: a paid download reproduces the composition, which can trigger mechanical obligations — and a cover licence for streaming doesn’t automatically cover selling downloads.

Swipe for the prep checklist before the button reaches your account. Save it. →

crewport.io

Sony just sued Kroger over 392 alleged unlicensed uses of its recordings across social and influencer content. Mariah Ca...
08/25/2026

Sony just sued Kroger over 392 alleged unlicensed uses of its recordings across social and influencer content. Mariah Carey, OutKast, Bill Withers, Harry Styles. (Claims in a new filing — no court has ruled.)
The misunderstanding underneath it: a platform can have permission to offer a song to certain users without giving every user permission to put it in an ad.

What actually applies — TikTok says businesses can’t use its general music library commercially and points them to the Commercial Music Library. Instagram says a Reel with licensed music can’t be boosted at all. An ad using a real song usually needs TWO licences: sync for the composition, master-use for the recording.

Buying the track or crediting the artist clears neither.
And “organic” isn’t a safe word. Sony’s complaint cites a TikTok with an ad disclosure and a $100 discount code. A post doesn’t become personal because nobody pressed Boost.

The detail worth stealing: Sony alleges Kroger licensed a song for SEVEN WEEKS in 2020 — and says a video was still live in August 2026. Put the takedown date in the campaign calendar before you publish.

Swipe for the clearance checkpoint and the four safer ways to source music. Save it. →

Not legal advice.

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