One spin on UK radio pays and . The same spin on US AM/FM pays the song and nothing else.
Play a track on UK radio and two separate arise. The composition side: the station's licence pays the writers and publishers for the use of the song. The recording side: the station's licence pays for the use of the actual recording, and that money splits between the recording's rights holder (usually ) and the performers on it. That recording-side performance income is neighbouring rights: the royalties owed to performers and recording owners when a recording is broadcast or played in public, separate from anything the songwriter earns.
Most of the world works this way. The US does not. American AM/FM radio pays the composition side through the US performing rights organisations, and pays nothing for the sound recording itself. No US terrestrial recording performance right exists to license. The writers of a US radio hit earn on every spin; the artist who recorded it, the session players behind them and the label that owns the collect nothing from the same broadcast.
There is one . Since the mid-1990s, US law has given recordings a performance right for digital transmissions only: satellite radio and webcasts pay a statutory licence, collected and distributed by SoundExchange (the US analogue of PPL's role, but for digital uses only). AM/FM stayed outside it.
For anyone modelling performer or label income, this is the biggest structural asymmetry in . The rest of this module covers why it exists, how it ripples through every other territory's payment rules, and what it does to the value of a catalogue whose airplay sits mostly in the US.