Internet Radio Royalties 2026: What Pandora Pays You

Somewhere right now, a stranger in Ohio just thumbed-up your song on a Pandora station built around an artist you've never met. That spin is worth a fraction of a cent. Multiply it by every internet radio station, college stream, and broadcaster simulcast that plays you this year, and it adds up to real money. The catch: none of it flows through your distributor, and if you haven't set things up on your end, it sits in someone else's pile.

This guide breaks down internet radio royalties for independent artists in 2026: how Pandora and other non-interactive services pay, what the new Web VI rates mean for your per-spin money, why a string of court fights over unpaid royalties matters to you, and the simple steps that make sure your share actually reaches you.

What Counts as "Internet Radio" (and Why It Pays Differently)

US law splits digital streaming into two worlds, and they pay you through completely different pipes.

• Interactive (on-demand) streaming. The listener picks the song. Think Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora Premium's on-demand mode, YouTube Music. The master-recording money comes to you through your distributor or label, and the songwriting side is split between mechanicals (the MLC) and performance royalties (your PRO).
• Non-interactive streaming (internet radio). The service picks the song, like a radio station. Think Pandora's free and Plus tiers, SiriusXM's online streams, iHeartRadio and Audacy simulcasts, college and indie webcasters, and in-store or cable music channels. The master-recording money is paid under a government-set statutory license, and it's collected by SoundExchange, not your distributor.

That second bucket is the one a lot of indie artists miss. Your distributor dashboard can look perfectly healthy while your internet radio royalties pile up unclaimed.

The statutory license in plain English

Under Section 114 of the Copyright Act, a non-interactive service doesn't need to negotiate with you or your label to play your recording. It gets an automatic license, pays a rate set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) or agreed in a settlement, and sends the money plus "reports of use" (play logs) to SoundExchange. SoundExchange then matches the plays to registered recordings and pays out.

You don't get to say no, and you don't get to negotiate the rate. What you do control is whether you're registered to collect.

Who Gets Paid: The 50/45/5 Split

Every dollar of internet radio royalties SoundExchange distributes for a recording is split by law:

If you're a self-releasing artist who owns your masters, you're entitled to both the 50% and the 45%. That's 95 cents of every dollar. But you have to register on both sides, and plenty of indie artists only register once (or not at all).

The featured artist share is especially important because it's paid directly to the artist regardless of any label deal. Even if a label owns your masters and you're unrecouped, your 45% does not go toward recoupment. It's yours.

Web VI: The New 2026–2030 Internet Radio Rates

Every five years, rates for non-interactive webcasting get reset in a CRB proceeding. The current one, known as Web VI, covers January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2030.

For commercial broadcasters streaming their stations online, SoundExchange and the National Association of Broadcasters settled on these per-performance rates (a "performance" is one song streamed to one listener):

Those numbers replace a 2025 rate of roughly a quarter of a cent per play, so 2026 is a real step up, with built-in annual increases after that. Artist advocates called the outcome a long-overdue win. Separate rate tracks apply to noncommercial webcasters (college and public radio), subscription services, and business establishment services, so always check SoundExchange's published rate tables for the exact category a particular service falls under.

What $0.0028 per play actually means for you

Let's do the math for a typical indie track that picks up steady internet radio rotation:

• 500,000 non-interactive performances in a year
• × $0.0028 per performance = $1,400 gross collected by SoundExchange
• Self-releasing artist who owns the master and is registered on both sides: about $1,330 (95%), minus SoundExchange's administrative fee
• The other 5% goes to the session musicians and vocalists on the track via the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund

It's not life-changing money for a single song. But it's recurring, it compounds across a catalog, and it's money you leave on the table entirely if you're not registered.

The Web VI rule changes that matter more than the rates

The headline rates get the attention, but a few structural changes in Web VI can affect small artists even more:

1. Better play data from webcasters. Starting in 2027, webcasters that rely on third-party streaming vendors have to make sure they actually receive and deliver the transmission and usage data. Better logs mean more plays matched to the right recording.
2. Proxy distributions when logs are missing. When a broadcaster fails to file its reports of use, SoundExchange can distribute that money based on proxy data instead. That's practical, but proxies tend to reflect what's popular elsewhere. If your plays happened on a station that didn't report, a proxy model is less likely to find you.
3. Payment timing and late fees. Broadcasters move to paying 30 days after the end of each month (down from 45), and audit late fees were restructured. Faster payment from licensees means faster money in the system.

The takeaway: the cleaner your recording metadata (ISRC, artist name, track title, label), the better your odds of being matched when real logs do come in.

Pandora Specifically: Which Tier Pays Through Which Pipe

Pandora is the biggest internet radio service in the US, and it's also the most confusing because it runs both kinds of streaming under one brand.

So if your music gets heavy Pandora station play, most of that master money is coming through SoundExchange, not your distributor. If you only look at your distributor's Pandora line item, you're seeing a sliver of the picture.

On the songwriting side, Pandora's radio plays generate public performance royalties through your PRO, and its on-demand tier generates mechanicals collected by the MLC. Pandora has also been in a separate legal dispute with the MLC over how it calculates mechanical royalties on bundled offerings, a reminder that "the service paid" and "the service paid correctly" aren't always the same thing.

Pandora AMP: free, and worth a few minutes

Pandora's artist platform, AMP, doesn't pay royalties directly, but it lets you claim your artist profile, track station adds and thumbs, and record short "Artist Audio Messages" that play before your songs. More thoughtful use of AMP means more station spins, which means more performances logged with SoundExchange.

The Court Fights Over Unpaid Internet Radio Royalties

Here's where it gets weird, and where indie artists have a direct stake whether they realize it or not.

SoundExchange audits licensees, and when it finds underpayments, it has historically sued to recover them. That right is now in question.

• SiriusXM. SoundExchange sued SiriusXM in 2023, alleging more than $150 million in underpaid royalties; SoundExchange now says the alleged underpayment exceeds $400 million, which SiriusXM denies. In August 2025, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed the case, ruling that while the statute designates SoundExchange to collect, it doesn't explicitly give SoundExchange the right to sue, unlike the law that set up the MLC, which does. SoundExchange appealed, and the Second Circuit heard arguments on September 25, 2026. At least one judge on the panel said it was "hard to read [Section] 114 as something other than a structure by which SoundExchange is designed to collect these royalties." As of mid-November 2026, there's no ruling yet.
• Sonos. A roughly $3.4 million SoundExchange suit against Sonos over unpaid royalties has been put on hold pending that Second Circuit decision. On October 16, 2026, the judge administratively closed the case, with the parties required to report back every quarter.
• Music Choice. A separate SoundExchange lawsuit over unpaid royalties from the cable and business music service, originally filed in 2019, came back to life in November 2026 after an appeals court threw out Music Choice's challenge. The DC Circuit described "tens of millions of dollars" at stake, and the parties are now heading into damages discovery and possible mediation in early 2027.

Why this matters to a small artist

When a service underpays the statutory license, the shortfall comes out of everyone's distribution, including yours. If the Second Circuit rules that SoundExchange can't sue on artists' behalf, enforcement could shift to individual rights owners and artists, which is effectively no enforcement for indies who can't afford federal litigation. If SoundExchange wins, recovered money flows back through the normal distribution, and artists who are registered get their share.

Either way, the money only reaches registered artists. Unregistered artists don't benefit from a recovery they never had a claim to in the first place.

Where Indie Artists Lose Internet Radio Money

From what we see in catalog audits, these are the most common leaks:

• Not registered with SoundExchange at all. Still the biggest one. Your distributor does not register you.
• Registered on one side only. You own your masters but only signed up as a featured artist (or only as a rights owner). You're collecting 45% or 50% instead of 95%.
• Recordings not listed in your repertoire. SoundExchange matches plays to ISRCs. New releases that never get added can go unmatched.
• Name mismatches. Pandora logs a play for "Jane Doe & The Rivals" while you registered as "Jane Doe." Variations and aliases need to be added.
• Missing session player credits. Non-featured musicians on your tracks can't collect their 5% unless the recording's lineup is known to the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund.
• Old unclaimed balances. SoundExchange can release royalties that remain unclaimed for three years after notice. If you've been streaming on internet radio for years without registering, some of that money may already be at risk.

Your Internet Radio Royalty Checklist

Here's the 30-minute version:

1. Create a SoundExchange account and register as a featured artist.
2. If you own your masters, also register as a sound recording copyright owner (rights owner). Use the same legal entity name that appears on your releases.
3. Upload or confirm your repertoire, making sure every recording is listed with its correct ISRC.
4. Add artist name variations (with and without "feat.," band names, stylized spellings).
5. Check for unclaimed royalties in SoundExchange's search tool under every name you've released under.
6. Credit your session players so they can collect their 5% share through the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund.
7. Claim your Pandora AMP profile to drive more station spins.
8. Confirm your songs are registered with your PRO and the MLC so the songwriting side of every Pandora play gets paid, too.

How RoyaltyCoPilot.ai Fits In

The hardest part of internet radio royalties isn't understanding the rules. It's knowing whether your catalog is actually set up right across SoundExchange, your PRO, and the MLC at the same time. That's what RoyaltyCoPilot.ai is built for.

RoyaltyCoPilot.ai runs a free catalog audit that cross-checks your recordings and compositions against the places royalties get collected, flags missing ISRCs and registrations, and highlights mismatches between how your music is logged and how it's registered. Instead of digging through three different portals, you get one list of gaps to fix.

If you've been getting internet radio spins for a while and never registered with SoundExchange, or you're not sure whether you're collecting both the rights owner and featured artist shares, start with a free scan at RoyaltyCoPilot.ai. The audit takes minutes, and the money it can surface has usually been sitting there for years.

The Bottom Line

Internet radio royalties are some of the most predictable money in music: rates are set by law, rising every year through 2030, and paid whether or not you ever pitched a single playlist. But that predictability only helps you if you're registered on every side you're entitled to. With Web VI rates up, data rules tightening, and the courts deciding who can chase underpaying services, 2026 is a good year to make sure your name is on the list when the checks go out.