July Deadline For Unclaimed Royalties

SoundExchange, the non-profit agency set up by the Recording Industry Association of America to collect royalties from digital performances on satellite and Internet radio, is ready to distribute $5.2 million in royalties collected between 1996 and 2000 - but part of the problem is that it can't locate all of the rightful recipients, since most musicians don't know about the agency or the royalties that they've already earned.

Actually, if you stop and think about it, 5 million is just a drop in the bucket for a 4 year period...Thanks to the satellite radio explosion and Internet broadcasting, the agency expects to collect $40 million in royalties in 2005 alone so musicians should make it a point to register with the agency. According to SoundExchange director John Simson, "It's important that artists sign up now or they're going to lose out on royalties already collected on their behalf...The deadline is July and currently, there are 15,000 artists in the system, but there's upwards of 30,000 more we have still to locate."

My question of the day is this - why should there be a deadline?  If you legally earn money from someone else's usage of your music - why should the right to claim that money disappear?