Am I required to have an association with the RIAA in order to be listed with LightningCD?
There is no requirement of any kind for you to be affiliated with the RIAA. If I am not required to hold an RIAA association, am I implicitly paying for the affiliation of others? (That is, are any agreements between LightningCD and the RIAA paid as a whole or based on the individual artist in question?) How about other agencies? No – strictly speaking, the RIAA is for record companies that create and sell music under their own brand, and though we distribute and retail music, we’re not a record company in that sense. You are welcome to be affiliated with the RIAA either individually or through a label, but if you decide that you do not wish to, you will not be charged for the association of others. That being said, each artist who wishes to be associated, via bar code, to reporting agencies (such as Soundscan) will be responsible for the purchase of their own bar code. Likewise, if you decide that you do not wish to, you will not be charged for the affiliation of others.
