Get Paid For Every Play: Neighbouring Rights, Made Simple

Sep 26, 2025 | Featured, Industry News

A person with twisted, spiked hair and red round sunglasses poses against a blue background in denim dungarees and patched jeans. Sitting on a retro ghetto blaster, they exude confident style—reminding artists to get paid for every play through music royalties.

When your recorded music plays on radio, TV, or in public places (shops, gyms, clubs, hotels), you’re owed money. Those earnings are called needletime. Many creators never claim it because of the process. We make it easy.

Who Gets Paid

  • Performers: lead artists, featured guests, session players, backing vocalists.
  • Rightsholders: labels and independent owners of the master recording.
  • (If a producer or engineer also performed on the track and is credited as such, we’ll include them too.)

What Pays (and What Doesn’t)

  • Pays: radio & TV broadcasts, non-interactive digital radio/simulcasts, and public plays in commercial spaces.
  • Doesn’t pay: on-demand streaming (full Spotify/Apple plays are not part of the neighboring rights).
  • You might hear “needle-time.” Same thing, different name.

What We Do For You

  • Register You Correctly: We register performers and rightsholders with the local society (e.g., SAMPRA in South Africa) and make sure credits are captured the right way.
  • Keep Your Catalogue Clean: We update your track list, fix missing or wrong info, and make sure new releases are covered automatically.
  • Collect Your Money: We track plays, match them to your recordings, and make sure the right people get the right share.
  • Fix Missed Money: We look back for unclaimed earnings and file claims if your credits or payments were wrong.
  • Collect Abroad (Where Eligible): Your music travels. We help collect in key countries through partner societies (e.g., PPL UK, GVL Germany, SoundExchange in the US for non-interactive digital radio).
  • Report Clearly: You get simple, quarterly statements that show what came in, from where, and for which tracks.

What We Need To Start

  • Your track codes (ISRCs) — think of these as your song’s barcode.
  • Performer list and roles — who did what (lead, featured, session, backing).
  • Rightsholder/label details — who owns the master and how you split earnings.
  • Release info — titles, versions (radio edit, remix, live), release dates.
  • IDs to verify — a simple mandate letter and basic ID for checks.
  • If you don’t have everything, send what you do have. We’ll help fill the gaps.

Timelines, Payments & Fees (Plain English)

  • Onboarding: a few weeks, depending on how complete your info is and society processing times.
  • Payouts: local and international money often arrives on set quarterly cycles; some territories pay later than others.

Why Work With Us

  • We’re Africa-rooted and globally fluent. We speak your language, cut out the admin noise, and focus on one thing—getting you paid for every play.
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