DamnedIfIknow used our news submit to tell us that the five top music companies Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI, BMG and Warner Music have agreed to pay unclaimed royalties to artists which totals around £28 million. The announcement was made after a two year investigation by the New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The report found that the companies weren't trying to track down artists that were supposed to get their royalties and many of these aren't the rich and famous ones we all know today. Instead the unpaid royalties stayed in the bank accounts of the record labels accumulating interest for each company. The largest payment was of $ 230,000 which went to the estate of Tommy Edwards who had a global hit in 1958.
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"The recording companies have an obligation to perform adequate due diligence and maintain information about the artists to whom they owe this money," Mr Spitzer said. "What we found is that, quite simply, they were not doing it.
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Full story over at the BBC. Well the music companies seem to have lost their artist records and couldn't track down artists they owed money too, how convenient. Some of these musicians are people that didn't make a lot of money during their days in the music industry. The money just kept piling up at the various record labels bank accounts accumulating large amounts of interest for them.
Source: BBC
