The Hidden Doors · 2026 Q3 edition
59 verified doors most artists never find: royalty pools with your name possibly already in them, the rights the law gives you that nobody mentions, and the buyers of music no one thinks to approach. Plus the 69 doors we opened and refused, each with the reason, so you stop spending money on the dead ones.
How this was made. 128 pages were opened and read across 6 sweeps. A door was written down only when the organisation's own page, or the statute itself, said what the row claims, and every row carries the address it was read from. Where a company's pricing page and its terms disagree, both are quoted and the disagreement is the finding. Where a page names no fee, the fee is recorded as not stated, never as free.
SoundExchange collects a US digital performance royalty that no PRO, no distributor and no label deal touches, and pays 45% of it straight to the featured artist. Registration is free. Buried in their FAQ: they collect as far back as 3 years, and after 3 years unclaimed royalties expire and are released. The money is real and it does not wait.
The report opens with a six-step audit: the exact searches, in order, where you type your own name and look. The Mechanical Licensing Collective's unmatched pool alone stood at $397,286,418.71 on their own dashboard.
Lyric Financial appears in artist guides today. Its domain now serves an Indonesian lottery gambling page. Music Xray is a shell. Sonicbids is a placeholder. Twitch Soundtrack died in 2023 and still gets recommended. A music supervision firm artists still pitch now redirects to an eight-piece wedding band. The graveyard section names 69 of these, each verified on its own page.
For any grant signed since 1978, section 203 of the Copyright Act opens a five-year window to take the rights back, and no contract wording can sign it away. The catch nobody mentions: notice must be served 2 to 10 years before the date you pick, so an artist who signed in the 1990s or 2000s has to act years ahead or the deal really does run forever. The report includes a calculator: enter the year you signed, see your window.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The ten-minute money audit | Six free searches, in order, with the exact links. Money may be sitting under your name right now, and this is where you look. |
| The clock | Every deadline that destroys money, including the 35-year termination window calculator. |
| The 59 doors | Claims, registrations, submissions, marketplaces and work-for-hire boards, each with why it stays hidden and what its own terms say. |
| Ten myths, killed | Things the internet teaches that the primary sources contradict, each with the citation. |
| The graveyard | 69 doors we opened and refused, with the reason each one failed. The half that saves you money. |
The audit, the calculator, all 59 doors and all 69 rejections. Delivered to your inbox, yours to keep. One payment, no subscription.
Get the report →Radio stays free. The Dial, the station pages and the market report cost nothing and always will.
No, and be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. What is guaranteed is that the pools are real, the searches are free, and most artists have never run them. Some buyers will find money the day they buy. Some will find none and will still know, for certain, instead of wondering.
Radio is the utility Rotation gives away because being the source artists trust is worth more than a fee. This is 6 research sweeps, 128 pages read, and 69 things we tell you not to waste money on. That is a report, and reports cost money.
No. The two legal doors, the termination right and the Copyright Claims Board, point at the statute and the tribunal's own pages so you can read exactly what we read. The calculator works in years and tells you plainly that the edges of a real deadline belong to a lawyer.