Among the most surprising figures in Ascap’s report are that in 2014 it tracked 500 billion performances of songs, twice as many as it did a year ago.
But Ascap has also increased its capacity to identify each of these performances, and collect licensing revenue from them. According to Ascap, it has identified more than 1.3 million pieces of music that were played last year on digital streaming services — some 30 times more than it was able to recognize in 2013 — and as a result it has paid nine times as many songwriters for their work.
via Ascap Topped $1 Billion in Revenue Last Year – NYTimes.com.