Chopped and Screwed: How the SoundExchange v. Sirius XM Decision Remixes Section 114 of the Copyright Act

Authors

• Cat Wood, University of Georgia School of Law

Abstract

In SoundExchange, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2025), the court held that SoundExchange—the congressionally designated nonprofit that collects and distributes statutory digital performance royalties under 17 U.S.C. § 114—lacks authority to bring suit to recover alleged underpayments. That ruling creates an enforcement paradox at the center of the section 114 statutory-license ecosystem: SoundExchange is the entity built to receive royalty reports, audit compliance, and distribute payments at scale, yet it cannot directly compel payment through litigation when the system fails. This Note argues that the decision misreads statutory structure by treating SoundExchange as a mere administrative clearinghouse rather than the functional enforcement intermediary Congress designed to make compulsory licensing workable in the digital era.

The Note proceeds in four steps. First, it maps the parallel architecture of U.S. music copyright and explains why streaming simultaneously triggers distinct licensing regimes under sections 114 and 115. Second, it correctly categorizes SoundExchange as a hybrid entity sitting in the liminal space between a non-profit and a statutory creation. Third, it analyzes the court’s hasty determination of 114's ambiguity and implied-right-of-action reasoning focusing on the court’s reliance on the Music Modernization Act’s express enforcement powers for the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) under section 115. Fourth, it offers a structural and comparative account of implied enforcement authority for statutory intermediaries, drawing on performing rights organizations and analogous doctrines across intellectual property where enforcement power follows from system function rather than formal ownership. The Note concludes that denying SoundExchange meaningful enforcement tools undermines the statutory bargain that made noninteractive digital performance licensing feasible, and it proposes interpretive and legislative paths to close the resulting compliance gap.

Recommended Citation

Cat Wood, Chopped and Screwed: How the SoundExchange v. Sirius XM Decision Remixes Section 114 of the Copyright Act, 33 J. Intell. Prop. L. (2026).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/jipl/vol33/iss2/9