Michael Huppe is the President and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-headquartered SoundExchange.
Huppe also acts as an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University.
SoundExchange has distributed more than $7 billion in digital performance royalties during Huppe’s tenure.
Michael Huppe: Career history
Michael Huppe began his career at the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) in 2000, acting as SVP and Deputy General Counsel.
During his time with the RIAA, Huppe worked to increase protection of intellectual property in areas including litigation, anti-piracy operations, licensing, and policy work.
He also spent much of his time working on SoundExchange, which is the only organization designated by the US government to administer the Section 114 sound recording license.
In 2007, Huppe moved to SoundExchange to become EVP and General Counsel. By 2011, he was named President and CEO.
Huppe manages all royalty collection and distribution operations in his current capacity. Mainly and more broadly, however, he spends much of his time educating SoundExchange’s rightsholders, artists, and musicians about their own music rights and the work done at SoundExchange.
As he put it in a Congressional testimony, SoundExchange’s “mission is to represent the interests of artists and copyright owners in receiving fair remuneration for the use of their creative works, and to make the process of collecting and distributing royalties as simple, transparent, accurate, and efficient as possible”.
As of April 2020, Soundexchange had paid out more than $7 billion to rights owners and artists.Music Business Worldwide