Rapper Mos Def, producer T-Bone Burnett and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have gone missing.
The organization created by the recording industry to collect and distribute Internet and satellite radio royalties can't seem to find these and other artists to whom it owes checks.
Washington-based SoundExchange released a list of 9,000 recording artists with unclaimed royalties in what it described as a last-ditch effort to distribute $500,000 worth of checks to the musicians for digital broadcasts dating from the late '90s. And the clock is ticking: The artists forfeit the money to SoundExchange if they don't claim it by Dec. 15.
The release of the list of unpaid artists has become the butt of jokes on industry Internet forums. And the disclosure comes at an inconvenient time for SoundExchange, which is arguing before the Library of Congress that it should remain the exclusive distributor of digital performance royalties that amount to millions of dollars a year.
"It says obviously how well they do their job -- which is not well at all," said Fred Wilhelms, a Nashville lawyer who helps performers and songwriters collect back royalties. "How do you not find the Olsen twins? All you've got to do is get off a bus in Salt Lake City and you'll find the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."
The list of unpaid artists includes some surprisingly well-known acts, including Academy Award winner Three 6 Mafia, the classic folk group Peter, Paul and Mary and celebrity sisters Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.
"Look, there may be people that you can Google and find," said John L. Simson, executive director of SoundExchange. "If they're well-known people, we've probably found them too. We've probably mailed multiple things to them without any response. What it shows you is perhaps for major artists or their management ... this may have been lower on the priority list than the current tour or the current recording."
Simson says it's not SoundExchange's job to hunt down performers any more than it's a bank's responsibility to hunt down depositors who have left money in inactive accounts.
Nonetheless, SoundExchange has registered 22,000 performers over the last year for royalty checks. It worked with CD Baby, an online retailer of music by independent artists, to identify 5,500 musicians who had unclaimed royalties.
