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I'm not certain. I don't think it's up to Rush to decide to whom the royalties are paid. Here is an excerpt from Rush himself:

It was the last thing that this highly sophisticated, conservative audience in Sacramento would ever associate with a conservative program. So it was part of being unpredictable, part of doing the unexpected, and the fact that I just happened to like it. All those three went into the decision. Now, when I came to New York and started the program nationally, that changed a lot of things. Like EMI and Chrissie Hynde had never heard of me in Sacramento and they had no idea I was using it, but when it shows up on 500 or 600 radio stations and I'm playing more than10 or 15 seconds of it (which is more than fair usage), then they want a piece .

But in my case they didn't want a piece; they didn't want me to use it. So EMI got hold of us and said, "You can't use it anymore! We will accept no amount of money. There's nothing you can pay us. You just gotta cease and desist," and the regular listeners of this program will remember that we went through a two or three week period here with different theme songs. We had to dump it. Then one day Chrissie Hynde appeared with Scott Shannon on the morning show at WPLJ, which was our FM counterpart to WABC in New York. She appeared there as a guest and Scott Shannon told her what had happened.

She was no fan of mine. You know, Chrissie is a big feminist and animal rights wacko and all that, but she had no clue that the song had been denied usage and she's telling Scott Shannon that her parents love my show. So in the end, we played tape of that 'cause the EMI people had told us that Chrissie wanted no part of me using the song. Well, here she is saying she didn't care. She told Scott Shannon of PLJ that she didn't care and her parents were fans so we got that tape, that audio; we played it for the EMI people, and the song came back to the program. We pay an annual fee -- which is fair, proper -- for usage.