SESAC represents composers. They are not involved with sound recording copyrights to my knowledge. Latter is the ℗ you see on a cd, not the c which is for the musical copyright which is what SESAC administers. That means if Bob Dylan wrote a song and someone else sings it, that SESAC administers the royalties for the composition. Like for Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower"--guess who wrote that. When Dion DiMucci was Bob Dylan's labelmate at Columbia he was one of the first major rock & roll artists to sing a Dylan composition, "What's All Over Now Baby blue?" A plethora of singers have since sang it and the Dylan compositions are ubiquitous.
An anecdote may be illustrative and perhaps helpful as I am just guessing at the reason behind the question: About 10 years ago, a dj friend of mind said he had a problem and asked me if I knew anything about SESAC. I did as I had represented ASCAP in a case. He said a SESAC rep had come into the upscale strip club where he worked when the owner was there and asked him about SESAC royalties. Rep said they had been sending notices, and owner said he did pay BMI and ASCAP monthly and had thrown away the SESAC notices since the club did not play SESAC songs. Rep said "Oh yes you do, and if you do not pay and we find out we will sue you not only for the royalties but for penalties and attorneys fees. Owner then told all the djs to be sure not to play SESAC songs and if anyone did and was caught he would be fired--and owner was a jerk an would have and did not understand the enormity of a problem he was foisting on the djs. Friend said he had been looking for ASCAP on his cds, and alot had nothing at all re that (BMI or ASCAP neither) and digital files were no use. I said it was a lot like sifting fly feces from papper wasn't it. He said yes. I advised that they do have web site with look up features and you could look up each track on a cd or all your digital files. I said my practical not legal advice was that you familiarize yourself with the names of the Bob Dylan compositions as everyone (even Jimi Hendrix) had recorded them, don't play hillbilly music or songs by artists whom you did know wrote for SESAC and just not worry about the thing. Advised that he should worry about probabilities or halfway likely possibilities but not remote possibilities, life was too short. DJ was a geek and too conscientious and tried to do look ups, then tried to talk to owners wife about this. Eventuallty he followed my advice. This is not legal advise, but hope it helps someone.
