A broadcasting operation headquartered in Charlotte focused on Christian talk and teaching programming and five secular radio station owners each face an audit of three years of statements submitted to SoundExchange concerning royalty payments they made pursuant two statutory licenses.
The Copyright Royalty Judges on Friday acknowledged the receipt from SoundExchange of a notice of intent to audit the 2020, 2021, and 2022 statements of account submitted by Bible Broadcasting Network (BBN), the noncommercial webcaster that operates BBNRadio.org concerning its royalty payments.
At the same time, these arbiters received notices from SoundExchange that it intend to audit statements of account for 2020, 2021, and 2022 submitted by three commercial radio broadcasters that also stream their over-the-air content on the internet: Cumulus Media, Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), Stephens Media Group, SummitMedia, and Urban One.
The CRB did not elaborate on the selection of these companies for audit.
Interestingly, the SoundExchange audits come as iHeartMedia this week received notice from the Mechanical Licensing Collective of that organization’s intent to audit its records over royalty payments. This audit will examine the accuracy of payments from the iHeartRadio app for the first three years of the MLC’s blanket license.
