# General Mandolin Topics > Jams, Workshops, Camps, Places To Meet Others >  NASCAP charging for bluegrass jams!?

## Newmexmandoboy

I just proposed to our local watering hole that they host a bluegrass jam. The bar lady claimed that they don't do live music anymore because of NASCAP fees. I asked if they could really charge them for old traditional tunes and she claimed yes. She said they even charged them when they had a musician playing his own original music. 

This doesn't compute at all. Has anybody ever heard of such craziness?

We are in a small town with only one bar that is heavily watched by the cops, but I can't imagine that could have anything to do with it. 

Very perplexed...

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## bfriedman

What is NASCAP?

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## PJ Doland

It's a stock car auto racing association for songwriters, composers, and performers.

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## allenhopkins

They mean *ASCAP,* I think.  This has been an issue sort of hanging like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over folk clubs, church coffeehouses, house concert sponsors, jams and _seisuns_ (other than those run in venues with regular entertainment, who've purchased ASCAP licenses).

If the law is enforced *strictly,* any public (and "public" defined _very_ broadly, _"a public place where people gather [other than a small circle of a family or social acquaintances]"_) performance of ASCAP-registered material, and any use of such _recorded_ material for broadcast, background music, karaoke, etc., requires that the sponsoring venue buy an ASCAP license.  The penalties apply against the venue, not against the person performing the material.  The license is required whether or not performers are paid or admission is charged -- yeah, really!

*Here's* ASCAP's explanation of its requirements.  And, I should note, the requirements for BMI, the other major music licensing agency, are quite similar.

Now, before the fit hits the Shan*, and everybody panics, note that this requirement is effectively unenforceable.  ASCAP does have local reps in certain areas who visit places where there's music (including background recorded music), and report this to ASCAP, and ASCAP can choose to go after non-licensed venues.  But there are a gazillion bars, folk clubs, churches with coffeehouses, Grange Hall jams, etc., and no way ASCAP can "police" all of them, or would try to.  They make their big buxx from radio/TV stations, major concert sponsors, "canned music" services, record companies, etc.  It's not cost-effective for them to go after Charlie's Monthly Old-Timey Jam to browbeat Charlie into paying a $300 annual fee, or whatever.  And, of course, Charlie will just discontinue sponsoring his jam, Cindy will take it up at a different location, and ASCAP will have to start all over again.

A venue that regularly sponsors music, charges admission, advertises widely, and books high-visibility musicians, had better have a proper license.  It's worth ASCAP/BMI's while to go after them.  And it is very hard to avoid the requirement by "requiring" that performers not perform ASCAP/BMI material.  There's a Buffalo coffeehouse that only booked performers who would agree to do non-ASCAP/BMI-licensed original material, in an attempt to avoid licensing payments.  But, are we to assume that in 20 years no one ever slipped a Bob Dylan or Bill Monroe song into a set at any time?   Strains credibility.

Venue owners do get scared -- and rightly so, if another sponsor in the area has been taken to court by ASCAP or BMI.  But I think the bar owner who avoids any live music to avoid buying a license, is being a bit over-cautious.  And besides, if she has a DJ, or even music playing over a sound system, ASCAP requirements can apply.

This is my summary, as a non-lawyer who's kicked the question around just a bit.  I'd guess that none of the venues sponsoring small-scale, informal music in my area has purchased a license, but I may be wrong.  *Here's* a four-year-old local article about ASCAP going after a Rochester club; it mentions that they've also contacted area towns that sponsor summer concert series.  So license enforcement is going on, but I doubt a small-scale jam in the back room of a bar, is going to be high on ASCAP/BMI's "hit list."

* old joke reference: "Where were you when..."

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## Newmexmandoboy

Thanks for this summary. I apparently had misheard the bartender and was going nuts searching in google for "NASCAP music"... not much shows up.

They seem have punished our local place to the extent that they have given up on live music. Do you have any idea how much such a license is?

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## allenhopkins

> ...Do you have any idea how much such a license is?


The Rochester club that was being sued for allowing four Iron Maiden songs to be performed during a "Heavy Metal Night" _charity event (!)_ was asked to pay about $1600 annually, I think.  License fees are based on the size of the venue, the frequency of performances.  You might want to check the link above to get ASCAP's fee schedule.  I think folk clubs with monthly concerts and periodic open-to-the-public jams or sing-arounds, were expected to pay around $500 annually.  I'd guess that if the only music sponsored was a weekly jam, without a significant admission charge, it might be less.

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## Newmexmandoboy

Interesting discussion. Helps a lot to have the acronym correct!

http://www.folkjam.org/forum/topic/f...m-vs-ascap-bmi

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## Willie Poole

Yes it is a royal pain in the butt...Allen, you might know, I have heard that ASCAP/BMI don`t have any legal righjts in some states...Can that be true?...I recall many years ago my band had to quit playing in the lower part of a club because the band that was playing upstairs were members of the musicians union and we weren`t at that time....

   Everyone is out to make a buck the easiest way they can....Paying royalties for recording songs on a CD is also a pain .....

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## bfriedman

Thanks for clearing that up. The correct acronym certainly helps.

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## jim simpson

Isn't this why when a birthday song is sung by the staff at a restaraunt when they present the cake, they sing "happy, happy, happy" to a different melody than "happy birthday" plus some really fast clapping?!

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## pjlama

I had a bad experience playing a bar a while back where once I started the manager got pretty weird a said only original music sighting ASCAP as the reason. Towards the end of the evening I ran out of esoteric material and started in on some recognizable stuff and was asked to stop. The gig really sucked because of this guy freaking out the whole time. Needless to it was the first and last time at that venue.

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## Paul Kotapish

The performance-royalty issue is a real problem for venue owners. There are a handful of coffeehouses in the Bay Area that attempt to walk the very narrow line of original-or-public-domain-material only, but most either pay the fee or ban live music and end up paying for Muzak. (Radios and CD players in public places are subject to fees, too.)

While a large club with live music every night might pay some hefty fees, in most cases I know about, smaller venues with only occasional music have been able to negotiate pretty reasonable fees. 

It's a tricky algorithm. We all want to play out and to see live music thrive. Likewise, most of us want to see songwriters rewarded for their efforts, too. Finding the balance is the hard part. It's especially galling for small places specializing in various forms of relatively obscure music. Because royalty distribution is calculated largely bases on radio-play data, very few of the artists whose songs and tunes are getting played in the little venues are seeing a dime in actual fees. The big slices of the royalty pie go to the songwriters with big hit records.

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## Newmexmandoboy

Around here it is quite common for jams to be held in churches. In our county we do seem to have an overabundance of them and maybe it's just the case they are easy venues to schedule, but could it be that they are somehow exempt from being a "public" place? Or at least ASCAP/BMI is much less likely to pursue churches? Most churches that I've been in don't serve beer, which makes me far less inclined to attend a jam at a church.

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## allenhopkins

> Isn't this why when a birthday song is sung by the staff at a restaraunt when they present the cake, they sing "happy, happy, happy" to a different melody than "happy birthday" plus some really fast clapping?!


Yes.  _Happy Birthday To You,_ written by the Hill sisters as _Good Morning To All,_ was copyrighted in the 1930's and, under subsequent copyright law revisions, will be under copyright until perhaps 2030.  The copyright is now owned by a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, and reportedly generates $2 million annually in revenues.  (*Informative Snopes article*)  Whether the song is licensed under ASCAP or not I don't know, but every time it's used in a movie or TV show, composer royalties go to the copyright owner.

As to churches: can't be definitive, but what I read suggests that while churches aren't exempt from licensing requirements *by law,* ASCAP and BMI don't go after them because if they did, the law would be quickly rewritten to exempt them.  Same, apparently, for schools, either public or private.  What if the school had to get an ASCAP license before the chorus could sing _Wind Beneath My Wings_ or some such at the annual assembly?

There is a *ton* of legislation and legal case law on the subject, with which I'm largely unfamiliar, and I commend a nice thorough Google search to those who want to get real specific in this area.  Revisions of the law (which, by the way, is _Federal_ law -- interstate commerce, remember?) have exempted certain "food service establishments" from some of the licensing requirements for "background" non-live music, based on size and number of devices.  Some lawyers are probably making a good living litigating these laws; me, I just want to avoid running afoul of them.  One would probably be pretty safe holding a jam in a church -- although, if the church made its space available to another organization (folk club, bluegrass association) for a jam or sing-around, that organization might be liable for license requirements, even if the church weren't named as a party to the action.

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## Polecat

This is not just an american problem. Here in Germany the equivalent of ASCAP is called GEMA, and they are just as virulent (sorry, I meant vigilant :Wink: ). Not only have they drastically increased the prices for live music, but they also have started charging kindergartens for photocopying childrens' songs, demanding money from Christmas Markets for playing christmas carols and so on. The reason for this appears to be that since the market in recorded music has effectively collapsed due to the possibilities opened up by the internet, they are no longer making what they regard to be enough money, and are exploiting every means they can to rake in the cash. The effect of this is basically to destroy grass-roots musical culture, be it traditional "folk" or any other (I would argue that notwithstanding copyright, a song like "Happy Birthday to you", Irving Berlins "Blue Skies" or the Beatles "Yesterday" are de facto in the public domain, or are the "representatives of artists' interests" going to start stopping people on the street and fining them for whistling a pop tune?). As you may have gathered, I feel rather strongly in this matter - for good reason - the landlord of the bar where my band has been playing regularly once a month received a threatening letter and incomprehensible form to fill out regarding our performances, and is now too frightened to let us continue playing there. We charged no entrance fee, passing a hat around to make a little pocket money, but basically doing it for the love of the music. I understand the need to look after the interests of musicians and composers if other people are going to exploit them to get rich, but to effectively stop a small band from playing music for their own and the clientelle of a bar's pleasure, in whose interest is that?

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## Mark Hudson

I'm not awfully familiar with this whole issue, but just to give you an idea of some of the esoteric applications of the law, if you run a small business and have a radio playing behind the counter, no problem. If you pipe the same music through your PA/intercom whatjamacallit then you need a license...  I'm not exactly sure if it applied to radio stations or just to playing CDs and such, it's been a while since I heard about it, but you can split hairs all day with this one :-)

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## MikeEdgerton

It applies to radio stations piped out over the PA as well. There was a documented case of a furniture store that got caught up in this a few years ago.

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## greg_tsam

The local music venue hosts live music only and has musicians playing dinner music and then a main band from 9-2 most every night, originals and covers.  ASCAP came by and threatened them with $20K-$50K in fines and fees and kept them scared and in negotiations for 6-10 months until finally settling for approx $2500 in fees.  Now everything is back to normal.  Just extorting their fees and getting paid.

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## MikeEdgerton

If you are a highly visible venue then you will get a visit from one of the agencies that collects fees for artists and composers. The biggest one I know in NJ has theirs displayed on the wall in the back of the venue. This isn't new stuff and has been discussed here a few times. It's part of the way that artists make money.

*One previous* thread and *another*

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## bfriedman

Does anyone know of any members of the mandolincafae.com forum that have received a royalty check from ASCAP? this has been an interesting read.

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## MikeEdgerton

There are a lot of artists that are members of the cafe and don't post. I'm sure some have, but I wouldn't expect an answer. If you're wondering if they really pay the artists the answer is yes.

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## allenhopkins

This thread may well head for a shutdown, since pretty soon we'll be talking the politics of copyright, licensing, and the "rights" of performing musicians and corner-bar owners vs. the "rights" of songwriters (and companies that buy songwriters' rights, and accumulate a number of copyrights) to get paid when others make money by using music they've created.

We can find a lot of examples of small clubs, furniture stores with "ambient music" playing, people sponsoring concerts in their houses, etc., who have been "leaned on" by ASCAP or BMI.  In many cases, these venues decide to stop sponsoring music rather than pay licensing fees.  That's a loss to performers, to the community, and, in a way, to the songwriters as well, since they don't get any royalties from the venues, and lose the opportunity to have their music heard and appreciated.  On the other hand, ASCAP/BMI come on strong, threatening big fines, but in the end usually negotiate a relatively reasonable settlement with the "offenders."  After all, it's not in their interest either to shut down venues where music is played!

The other factor is what I mentioned in my first post: the laws regulating copyright and licensing are in many respects unenforceable.  ASCAP/BMI would have to recruit thousands of local reps to cover every corner bar with an "open mic night," every community-center bluegrass jam, every pizza place that plays the "oldies" channel through a sound system.  They are going to concentrate on more high-profile, lucrative "targets."  Not exclusively, and we'll find examples such as Polecat and Greg T cite above, but I doubt that many small venue operators are up late worrying about ASCAP.

One point: in the current economic downturn, when sales of "physical" recordings (CD's, etc.) are 'way down, and concert sponsors are cutting back, there's incentive to go after more revenue through license enforcement.  We may be seeing some of that.

And the other argument that's been brought forward, that "music is free" and charging people to play Beatles songs or _Happy Birthday_ is somehow "wrong" -- well, if _you'd_ written _Yesterday_ and were watching thousands of people make millions of dollars recording and performing your song, and you were living in your parents' basement and gigging at a local pass-the-hat club on the weekends -- because no one was enforcing your right to be paid for your work -- there might be a different point of view.  Creative people should have the right to be compensated for their products, just like electricians, carpenters, and video-game developers.  How those rights are enforced, that's a question that raises a lot of the issues we're discussing.

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## Polecat

> This thread may well head for a shutdown, since pretty soon we'll be talking the politics of copyright, licensing, and the "rights" of performing musicians and corner-bar owners vs. the "rights" of songwriters (and companies that buy songwriters' rights, and accumulate a number of copyrights) to get paid when others make money by using music they've created.


I hope not, because its pretty important for people who perform in a non- or semiprofessional context





> ...the other argument that's been brought forward, that "music is free" and charging people to play Beatles songs or _Happy Birthday_ is somehow "wrong"...


I don't think anyone here is trying to defend that point of view




> Creative people should have the right to be compensated for their products, just like electricians, carpenters, and video-game developers.  How those rights are enforced, that's a question that raises a lot of the issues we're discussing.


That is precisely the point - ASCAP, or GEMA, or any other of these organisations should really rethink their policy regarding live music - apart from the example I gave above, I recently played in another bar where I asked the landlord about GEMA - he immediately became incandescent and told me that he had recently received a visit from 2 representatives demanding money for playing CDs - fair enough, the fee, though stiff, is justified. But they then went on to tell him if people danced to the music the fee would be increased, and in answer to his question as to what he should do if one of his customers got drunk and started dancing, they told him he is required to inform them "at a later date" and pay the fee retrospectively. As regards our gig, he hadn't informed the authorities and didn't intend to, suggesting a very dark and smelly place they can put their paperwork. The situation is ludicrous, and the policies of the copyright enforcement agencies hopelessly out of tune with the situation on the ground. It is interesting that this wasn't a problem ten or fifteen years ago (at least here in Germany), but has emerged parallel to the "download revolution"; one is tempted to believe that ASCAP or GEMA are less interested in protecting the legitimate rights of artists, and more in ensuring that they create sufficient income to further justify their existance; why else are they now interested in small gigs which used not to bother them, and why have they hiked their fees up by such an extent (I'm told, depending on the venue, between 300 and 600%)? As regards getting paid, the bass player in my band was formerly in a heavy metal band glorying in the name of "Chinchilla", and recorded a couple of albums with them. He tells me that the money he recieved was far less than the yearly subscription fee, and he has subsequently left GEMA. I hope this isn't all to incendiary and controversial, but I feel very strongly in this matter.

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## Mandobart

"_Creative people should have the right to be compensated for their products, just like electricians, carpenters, and video-game developers. How those rights are enforced, that's a question that raises a lot of the issues we're discussing_."

Early in my career I designed and built some decontamination equipment for use at a government facility.  My company and myself were paid to to the job.  It sure would be nice if I continued to get paid every time they used that equipment, or trained someone on it, or took pictures, or thought about it.  Or how about auto mechanics; they could get paid to fix your brakes, and then get royalties every time you use those brakes.  It'd be neat for plumbers if you paid them when they replaced your toilet, and then paid them again every time you flush it.  I have an even better idea - ASCrAP could _fine_ composers that write lousy, unimaginative drivel for wide spread commercial broadcast.  They'd have to pony up every time their crummy song got played.

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## Willie Poole

There is a well known club here in Bethesda Md. and one night Bill Emerson was playing there along with Cliff Waldron and a couple got up to dance and Bill just stopped playing and said "If you dance, I don`t play, if I play, you don`t dance"...The fact is that the club did not have a permit to allow any dancing even though they had a small place that looked like a dance floor....

   My band used to have a cloggers club that followed us wherever we played and after a while I never seen them show up any more and I wonder if they got told by some club owner that dancing wasn`t allowed and they just stopped so as not to cause any conflicts....

   I bowl every Monday and Friday nights and during open play they play videos over the telescore system and I wonder if ASCAP has ever gotten on them, I`m afraid to ask....Those might be coming from a central location and broadcast by Brunswick Corp to all of their houses, if that is the case I`m sure it has been taken care of....

   Interesting stuff....Willie

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## jaycat

> "_Creative people should have the right to be compensated for their products, just like electricians, carpenters, and video-game developers. How those rights are enforced, that's a question that raises a lot of the issues we're discussing_."
> 
> Early in my career I designed and built some decontamination equipment for use at a government facility.  My company and myself were paid to to the job.  It sure would be nice if I continued to get paid every time they used that equipment . . .


Presumably you were paid a salary by the company you worked for. It doesn't work that way for songwriters, at least not since the days of the Brill Building.




> Everyone is out to make a buck the easiest way they can....Paying royalties for recording songs on a CD is also a pain .....


Oh sure, songwriting is an easy ticket to the big bucks, everyone knows that. Better than an MBA.

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## jaycat

(duplicate)

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## Brent Hutto

When you don't like the cost of a product, don't buy it. Not sure why when the "product" is the use of a well-known song and they don't like the price, it's OK to steal it without paying. Just don't perform copyrighted material, write your own songs.

The real problem of course is that very few people want to listen to the heartfelt ballads that some poor anonymous musician writes and performs. A lot more people will listen to him perform well-known covers, most of which happen to be copyrighted. So your choice, play your own stuff for free and nobody will listen or play the good stuff they want to hear...in which case the song owner wants to be paid.

You don't have to pay to perform songs. You just have to pay to perform songs *that somebody else owns and wants to get paid for*. So don't pay 'em. Just don't whine because they refuse to give the song to you for free.

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## allenhopkins

> ...I don't think anyone here is trying to defend that point of view...one is tempted to believe that ASCAP or GEMA are less interested in protecting the legitimate rights of artists, and more in ensuring that they create sufficient income to further justify their existance; why else are they now interested in small gigs which used not to bother them, and why have they hiked their fees up by such an extent (I'm told, depending on the venue, between 300 and 600%)?...


1.  You did say _"I would argue that notwithstanding copyright, a song like _ Happy Birthday To You, _Irving Berlin's_ Blue Skies,_ or the Beatles'_ Yesterday_ are_ de facto_ in the public domain, or are the 'representatives of artists' interests' going to start stopping people on the street and fining them for whistling a pop tune?"_  If these songs were _de facto_ public-domain material, anyone could record them without obtaining copyright approval.  No gets charged for whistling a tune, playing in his rec room, singing for her kids, or leading a family sing-around by the campfire.  It's *public performance* -- admittedly defined _very_ broadly -- that comes under the purview of copyright and licensing laws.

2.  Money collected by ASCAP/BMI (I can't speak for the German equivalent), mainly goes to the participating artists, with the usual "overhead and administration" taken off the top.  One receives payment based on the number of times one's copyrighted and licensed material is played.  If you write _Happy Birthday To You,_ you (or your heirs, or the firm that purchased the rights to the song) collect royalties a century after the song was composed.  If you write _Cherish My Teen-Age_ Angst, or something similar, and no one but you ever sings it and it's never recorded, well, it's not worth the money to license it or be a member of either the musicians' union or a licensing agency.

3.  As I mentioned above, the current economic debacle in the music "industry," with CD's apparently going the way of the dodo (or the LP), and all kinds of music being posted and downloaded without a dime changing hands, means the licensing agencies have incentive to be more aggressive in trying to collect what's legally due them.  Flip side of this, is the resulting annoyance and resistance (which you articulately express), and the also-related incentives to *stop* sponsoring music, producing negative results for the licensing agencies, the venue sponsors, and the musicians themselves.

Quite a few years ago, some NYCity people put out a fairly amateurish collection of song lyrics and chords called _Winds Of the People,_ with no apparent attempt to obtain clearance or pay fees to composers, licensing agencies, publishers, or anybody else.  That original attempt grew into the now-ubiquitous (at least among folkies) _Rise Up Singing,_ which has become a quasi-hymnal at many a sing-around.  Traditional, public-domain, and copyrighted songs are mingled, and whatever payment arrangements have been made, aren't clear to me.  There's a lively musical scene going on everywhere that seems to be unaffected by threats of legal action or license law enforcement.  However, there are also 'way too many cases in which the legal rights of composers and licensees come into confrontation with the desire to provide music to a broad audience, and perhaps make a few buxx in the process.

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## Mandobart

I know the best way to end up with a million bucks in music writing or performing is to first start out with two million.  The artists aren't the ones making all the money.  I have no complaint with a person being paid for what they produce.  What I don't get is this "in perpetuity" payment to the artist or their heirs (with a healthy "handling fee" by the benevolent ASCAP).  Sure, its wrong to rip off someone else's work and either try and pass it off as your own or profit from it.  But, what other field of endeavor allows the requirement of a payment multiple times for the same product?  I can see the argument that it costs money to keep pressing records or burning/packaging/distributing CD's.  But how about a guy in a bar or park or church basement who covers a Dylan tune with his own interpretation on a harp guitar, for which his only reward is the pleasure of sharing music with others.  He or the venue he's playing in owes something to someone?  Copyright law says yes, but it still doesn't make sense to me.

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## Brent Hutto

Why is you singing a Dylan song...and paying Dylan for doing so...any different than me recording a Dylan song on a CD...and paying Dylan for that?

And why does Bob Dylan care whether you are making money or losing money when you perform his song? He just wants to get paid for his song. 

Publishing pays royalties. Acting performances pay royalties. Software pays royalties. Patents pay royalties. Contracting to write software or set up business systems can be arranged to pay royalties. Lots of things pay royalties. Even engineers occasionally receive royalties for innovations they created in manufacturing or design of industrial products (not often, though). 

Once again, nobody has to pay Bob Dylan a cent. You only have to pay if you use his songs. The argument boils down to "I want to perform Dylan songs really, really, really bad but I really, really, really don't want to pay. So he shouldn't make me". Not very convincing.

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## Brent Hutto

Duplicated post, sorry.

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## jaycat

> But, what other field of endeavor allows the requirement of a payment multiple times for the same product?


Are there any recording artists in this forum who wouldn't rather sell 100,000 copies of their CD than 10 copies?

Seriously, there is an equitable line somewhere, but it's hard to pin down. I don't have a solution, but we all know the stories of songwriters in the old days who took a one-time $50 payment and then lost rights forever to what would become oft-covered blues songs, for example.

ASCAP and BMI are flawed but necessary evils. No one is gonna take it upon themselves to send me 2 pennies every time they cover a song of mine. (If they did, I could give my 2 cents worth!)

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## Polecat

> Why is you singing a Dylan song...and paying Dylan for doing so...any different than me recording a Dylan song on a CD...and paying Dylan for that?


Quite simply, the difference is one of intention. If you record a Dylan song on a CD it is presumably in order to sell it and make a profit. If I sing a Dylan song in a bar and pass a hat around I may make the money to pay my gas mileage and be able to buy a beer, but if I want to make anything approaching money to be taken seriously, I'm doing the wrong thing. There are other reasons for making music in this way. The point of copyright is to stop one person making money by anothers' labour, which is right and good. As jaycat puts it, *ASCAP and BMI are flawed but necessary evils*, their flaws have become significantly more obvious in the past few years.

@ allenhopkins: I think you misunderstood my attempt at irony - obviously it is absurd to fine people for whistling a pop tune in a public place, although it could be construed as a "Public performance" - a few years ago it was also possible to play the same songs in a bar without the landlord recieving threatening letters, and had I not had the experience I have had, I would have regarded the problem as something not to be taken too seriously. I am in favour of protecting intellectual property rights, but to do so at the expense of grass-roots culture seems to me a grave mistake that does no-one, least of all the composer, any favours.

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## barney 59

They don't make the performer at a bar pay to play. Ascap charges the bar,the bar charges for drinks,drinkers,some of them anyway,come to hear the music. The bar pays(or maybe not) the performer. The music is part of the attraction at the bar and the bar owner profits from it,this is why they have music at bars. If ASCAP or BMI make their fees unreasonable there will be a backlash and it will cost them as more places eliminated music and decide to show football or something on bigscreen TV. My guess is that the fees aren't anymore unreasonable than my taxes,or my electric bill or my medical insurance premiums --ok so maybe they're unreasonable--and the bar owners complain, so what, no one is listening to you if your bills are unreasonable! Some song writers get rich,most don't there has to be some mechanism to get what is due them to them.

There is a reasonable argument that churches and schools get a pass because there is no profit motive associated with the performance. That gets bent sometimes for sure but it would be hard to prove.

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## Willie Poole

Do club owners have to pay ASCAP/BMI if they have a juke box playing CD`s that have already given royalties to the writers/publishers of those songs on the CD?  

   I am a friend of Gerry Stover, Don`s son, and Gerry every now and then gets a check in the mail from songs that his dad wrote, or claimed to have written, and Don has been dead for quite a few years now....paying royalties to an heir is not helping the writer of the song so something is missing I am afraid....It really don`t bother me because I have never published any of the songs that I have written but have recorded them on CD`s and sold the CD`s, maybe I am missing out on some big money....

     Willie

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## MikeEdgerton

Most jukeboxes in bars aren't owned by the bar, they are generally owned by a company that places them there and I would assume the owner of the jukebox would be required to buy a license. The modern machines keep track of what songs are played.

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## Spruce

A little bird told me that the enforcement of this whole deal is supposedly one of the mafia's legitimate businesses...

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## MikeEdgerton

I'll go out on a limb and say if that was true not many bar owners would be complaining. I spent 20 years in the trucking business in New Jersey, I do know how things work. I have a friend that works for one of the agencies.

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## allenhopkins

Copyright holders don't get paid "in perpetuity," but it's getting close.  Here's what the US Copyright Office (which is part of the Library of Congress) has to say:

_The term of copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors. To determine the length of copyright protection for a particular work, consult chapter 3 of the Copyright Act (title 17 of the United States Code)._

So the heirs of a composer/songwriter get the benefit of copyright protection for 70 years after his/her death.  It is possible for the copyright holder to sell or assign the rights to a "work," and music publishing companies have accumulated rights to many "works," which is why someone like Michael Jackson could end up owning publishing rights to most of the Beatles' catalog, which had been purchased by Northern Songs Ltd.

Is it a "bad" thing that the rights to intellectual property endure past the life of the creator, and that the creator's heirs also benefit?  As pointed out several times above, if you perform or record a song written by someone else, you're using that person's *intellectual property* to benefit yourself, even if it's only tip money for beer.  So it would seem, in fairness, that you should get that person's permission, and pay him/her for the right to do it, if the person wants payment.

Beyond that, there's a dense thicket of details and questions.  How much to pay, how to enforce property rights, how to deal with a third person like the licensing agency that's interposed between you and the creator, how to continue to have a thriving "grassroots music" environment and still provide permission and payment where they're due...  No one ends up being satisfied, and the growth of the internet and its widespread dissemination of "intellectual property" without permission or payment has made things more complex by a huge factor.

Stay tuned for more legislation, lawsuits, and passionate advocacy of clashing viewpoints.  However, I do have to say that when I start picking a Bill Monroe tune at a jam at times, the question of whether Bill's heirs are going to get the 10¢ they may have coming, is the farthest from my mind.  I just hope I don't blow the break (again).

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## Peter LaMorte

Seems all this does is diminish live music. Oh wait, what about all that "original" music. I've heard very little original music, but have heard a lot of great music made by many standing on the shoulders of other great musicians. Just my 2 cents.

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## toddjoles

Churches are not exempt and must maintain copyright integrity of a higher standard than other venues. My church sometimes pays up to 3 or 4 licensing fees per song per use.  For example, 1 fee for the original author, another for the lyrics, another for additional lyrics and another for the arraingement.  In the past this had been largely ignored by churches or they used traditional hymns.  Today they have realized that they must be accountable like everyone else, it's just the right thing to do. 

I go to one local jam that gets around licensing by being an educational workshop.  A 1/2 hour of educational teaching or discussion of jam ettiquette, type of music, and a host of other topics followed by a jam where everyone is welcome no matter what their experience.

Jams at a restaurant, bar, farmers market and coffee house would be considered entertainment just as a band would be and subject to a licensing fee.

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## Barry Wilson

which in turn makes the musicians earn less money from bar owners, which again makes less musicians want to play these venues... it's a vicious circle. I am all for people being paid for what they write but being paid long after you have died? record sales or music downloads sure, but live performance? you'd think the music being played live would just increase the demand for buying/downloading the music or radio air play... that's where the big money is. it's nickle and diming musicians to death because the performing artist is the bottom of the food chain in this respect and have to bear the brunt of the burden.

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## Brent Hutto

They did get paid before they died. If a copyright was only good for 10 years it would be worth less than one that last life plus 75 years. So the price a song is sold for reflects its total value...which happens to accrue over life plus 75 years or whatever it is. And if the writer keeps the song in the family, some of that value accrues to his heirs after he is gone. Lots of people consider leaving something for their family to be a worthwhile thing to do.

I'd suggest once again if you don't care to "make less money" by performing at a place that pays for an ASCAP license then by all means perform songs you write yourself. Just no whining when that makes you less money still because nobody wants to listen. 

It's amazing that someone will use another person's famous song because it makes them more money and then get on their soapbox to decry the fact that it also makes money for the guy who wrote it. If you make money performing a Dylan song, you're not ripping off Dylan. If Dylan gets money when you perform then he's ripping you off. Do I have the logic correct?

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## Polecat

<Message deleted by request of the poster>

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## David Surette

This is a very interesting thread. A lot of the questions and points presented here have been making the rounds for a number of years, but it does seem that the purported demise of CD sales has led ASCAP and BMI to become more vigorous in their pursuit of fees. I think one of the primary complaints of independent and lesser-known artists is that the payment structure to artists is not very accurately based on what music is being played in smaller venues where the fees are collected (clubs, bars, etc.). There is a sense that a disproportionate amount of the money goes to acts that generate significant commercial radio airplay. It would perhaps be galling to a club that features only bluegrass, for example, if most of your fees were going to payments to Lady GaGa and Justin Bieber.

There is an excellent and very detailed article about this available on guitarist Harvey Reid's website, which may be interesting to some of you: http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/es...-politics.html

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## Brent Hutto

David,

I agree that it's a horribly idiotic system designed around a small subset of musical styles and built around a decades out of date set of assumptions. But that's a far more interesting set of topics than complaining about the fact that any money is involved in the first place. 

I think some people feel if they're not making any money out of performing then the guy who wrote the song shouldn't be making any money either. I'm not a musician but the working musicians I'm acquainted with have said for ever and ever that writing and not performing is where the real money lies. 

ObBigMon: Bill Monroe would had to play a heck of a lot of live shows to make as much money as he did writing that one little song all those years ago.

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## eadg145

I read this article a few months ago and found it interesting.  I believe I understand both sides of this argument.  I think there's a balance to be found here, but I do think that we may be out of balance if the story in the article becomes a trend.

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## Beanzy

Surely venues should pay if they want to benefit from the music? If not then they should not use it to enhance their business. 
What is difficult is that there seem to be three collection agencies so venues seem to need to pay three fees in case their musicians decide to play music from another catalogue.

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## barney 59

If the music played in live venues were to kept track of in play lists and those play lists were then submitted to the licensing agencies then it would be easier to dole out the money to the proper writers and publishers. With computers and the internet it wouldn't be a very difficult task. I think radio stations actually may do that. 
Many writers don't get much recognition in their life time and some don't live very long but may leave a family behind. The fact that the rights to written music or other works expires at all seems less fair to me than the unfairness that some people feel because it lasts as long as it does. A great of deal money has been generated from Bach's works since the advent of recorded music. A Dickens story or Mark Twain story can make a lot of money for Disney yet the estate of those people can receive nothing. If you had royalties from say an oil well on the family farm and it was still producing after 150 years and the farm was still in the family or even sold to someone else they would receive the royalties. If you write a book or a piece of music and it's still popular in 150 years your heirs loose those rights and anyone can do anything they want with it at that point.

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## montana

I have experienced all these problems. Losing jobs in bars so fat cats can make more money. This is why I have no problem downloading free tunes at sites and coping CDs and dvds

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## MikeEdgerton

I think car dealers make too much money so I don't have any problem stealing their cars. I think grocery stores make too much money so I don't have any problem stealing their fruit. You do understand what you're saying right? It's ok to steal because you think someone is making too much money. If someone thinks you make too much money is it ok for them to steal your mandolin? Think about what you're saying here. You're justification for theft is a little loose.

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## allenhopkins

> I have experienced all these problems. Losing jobs in bars so fat cats can make more money. This is why I have no problem downloading free tunes at sites and copying CDs and dvds


Were you a songwriter -- not a "fat cat," but say just bumping along, scuffling for jobs, maybe selling a couple thousand CD's or downloads -- and you found someone had recorded one of your songs on their own CD, without attribution or payment, and was selling quite a few of them, would you feel the same?  If you took a photo, and it was used in a book or magazine without crediting or paying you, would you just say, "Hey, art should be free"?

Check out this vid:



The song, _Ruby's Knishes,_ was written by Bonnie Abrams, and performed by Bonnie, Glenna Chance, and me as Love & Knishes.  Someone took the MP3 off *my website* and used it without attribution or notification.  We only found out because someone viewed the vid and told us.  Now, Bonnie neglected to copyright _Ruby's Knishes,_ and the poster has subsequently attributed the song and offered to take it down if we object.  No real harm, I guess.

But should we be glad that Bonnie's song got widespread distribution on YouTube?  Should we be PO'ed that no effort was made to find out who wrote it, give proper credit, get permission?  What should our attitude be toward unapproved and uncompensated use of Bonnie's intellectual property?  Gratitude?  Righteous wrath?

Questions that aren't always that easy to answer.

*Mandolin content:* I'm playing my c.1910 Gibson 3-point F-2, and singing harmony vocals.

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## neil argonaut

> If someone thinks you make too much money is it ok for them to steal your mandolin? Think about what you're saying here.


If they can find a way of downloading a virtual copy of my mandolin which leaves mines still intact, then they're more than welcome to it.

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## Peter LaMorte

Mike,
We are not advocating stealing, we are simply playing and singing a song for god's sake. All this does is kill playing live music. If someone is playing and not making money from your song, as in jams, why should there be a transfer of money. It's all about the lawyers and finding a new source of revenue.

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## barney 59

It's not a new source of revenue,it's been around a long time and is really the only way a song writer can make money, collections from royalties. People have been singing around the campfire or backporch forever and I have never heard of ASCAP showing up and asking for a payment. I know of bars that host jams and the jams are popular. The bar is making money on those nights(and often on what would be a slow night) and getting the musicians for not only free, the musicians are paying for drinks . ASCAP straight up wants paid if you have music in your establishment. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. If they have stepped up collections and are rounding up the stragglers so be it, if someone has to pay then it's only fair that everyone pays. If they are raising the rates beyond a reasonable inflationary bump then it will probably have an effect on musicians if those fees are a deciding factor as to why a venue would quit having music in their establishments. It would be a stupid model for ASCAP to establish, it would hurt them in the end to raise fees to such an extent that clubs couldn't afford them. If anyone knows what kind of fee schedule ASCAP is presently using I'd be curious to know. What is it costing clubs and bars and coffee houses to host live music?

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## MikeEdgerton

> Mike,
> We are not advocating stealing, we are simply playing and singing a song for god's sake. All this does is kill playing live music. If someone is playing and not making money from your song, as in jams, why should there be a transfer of money. It's all about the lawyers and finding a new source of revenue.


If you read the message I was responding to that's not what it said. He was saying he didn't feel bad about stealing because he thought the fat cats were making too much money. If you were selling a CD and I thought you were charging too much so I made a dozen copies and gave them away to your fans thus taking revenue from you, that would be ok with you? I don't think so but it's ok for the guy that posted that because he's tired of the fat cats making too much. Theft is theft. You want to copy CD's and trade them illegally feel free, just don't try to justify it because you really can't.

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## Tune

> Now, Bonnie neglected to copyright _Ruby's Knishes_


Nope. It was _copyrighted_ immediately upon having been fixed in a tangible medium (at least assuming US jurisdiction).
If the _application to register_ the copyright had been filed before the work was unlawfully used, then the author would have had a full array of remedies available (largely, ability to recover attorneys fees). Regardless, in order to act against infringement, an application must be filed (not necessarily registration _received_ from USPTO) before seeking remedies in court.

Allowing copyright violation to continue can result in harm to the author's rights, such as loss of the ability to stop violation, and--despite seeking legal advice, judged to have been wrong but nonetheless followed despite warning--loss of the copyright itself. (See, e.g., the Babette Ory v. Country Joe McDonald litigation results in federal district and appellate courts, bankruptcy court, and CA state court.)




> If you were selling a CD and I thought you were charging too much so I made a dozen copies and gave them away to your fans thus taking revenue from you, that would be ok with you? I don't think so but it's ok for the guy that posted that because he's tired of the fat cats making too much. Theft is theft. You want to copy CD's and trade them illegally feel free, just don't try to justify it because you really can't.


Some courts are beginning to recognize that "theft is theft" doesn't really apply as a simple assertion. Copying a copyrighted work is not "theft" of the work itself. It is a wrongful violation of one or more rights included in "copyright," but bare claims about loss of revenues might be regarded as not necessarily self-evident; given evidence, for example, that legitimate sales do result from (and despite) unlawful electronic distribution. (Such difficulties in establishing damages through introduction of competent, non-speculative evidence is another important benefit from copyright registration before infringement occurs: availability of statutory damages.)

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## neil argonaut

> If you read the message I was responding to that's not what it said. He was saying he didn't feel bad about stealing because he thought the fat cats were making too much money.


He said he didn't feel bad about downloading and copying, it was you who said it was stealing. Not trying to argue that it is or isn't,or that it's wrong or right, just pointing out that he (along with in my experience a far larger percentage of people than it would appear from here) may no consider copying or downloading as stealing.

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## MikeEdgerton

> He said he didn't feel bad about downloading and copying, it was you who said it was stealing. Not trying to argue that it is or isn't,or that it's wrong or right, just pointing out that he (along with in my experience a far larger percentage of people than it would appear from here) may no consider copying or downloading as stealing.


So, if I don't consider taking your mandolin stealing it isn't. Don't leave it laying around. You're not making sense. Look, again, if you want to copy disks and download music have at it. Just don't try to justify your actions like this, it doesn't work. It's still theft. if you choose to steal that's your choice but don't think it's anything else. Saying it's ok because you don't consider it stealing doesn't make it anything other than it is.

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## Brent Hutto

It does take an admirable degree of _chutzpah_ to present ripping off recordings from fellow musicians as an morally superior act of civil disobedience. As opposed to admitting you're doing it because a) you're too cheap to pay for what you want and b) you can get away with it.

It's part b) that's at the root of this whole thread. In the past, many establishments that feature live music were doing so without paying for the performance rights that the law accords to songwriters. Now that a large number of them have been called on it the whining commences because something you used to be able to get away with easily is harder to get away with now. 

It's like the guy who gets a ticket for driving 82 in a 65 zone complaining "I always drive over 80 and you've never given me a ticket before". That argument doesn't carry a whole lot of weight and not having been ticketed before certainly doesn't give that guy some kind of moral high ground. I guess some people's response would be go find a road with no cops and drive 90 just to show that they can!

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## neil argonaut

> So, if I don't consider taking your mandolin stealing it isn't. Don't leave it laying around. You're not making sense. Look, again, if you want to copy disks and download music have at it. Just don't try to justify your actions like this, it doesn't work. It's still theft. if you choose to steal that's your choice but don't think it's anything else. Saying it's ok because you don't consider it stealing doesn't make it anything other than it is.


I wasn't saying that he wasn't stealing because he didn't call it that, I was merely pointing out that it was you, not him, who called it stealing. And again, I'm not trying to say it's right or wrong, just that it would be foolish not to recognise that millions of people all over the world don't seem to have any moral problem with it. Whether this makes the world a better or worse place, or whether it makes these people evil or morally flawed or worse people than you is up to you to decide.
And if you find my mandolin lying around and manage to make a copy of it, go ahead, I don't mind.

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## Brent Hutto

The vast majority of people in the world, at least according to my experience, have a moral compass that is firmly oriented on reward and punishment. When the possibility of punishment is effectively zero (as for an individual downloading rather than paying for music) the reward can be miniscule and they'll still do whatever it is. 

Pay for music? Don't pay for music? If nobody can stop you from not-paying then where's the harm? Of course if roped into a conversation about their behavior they will always dress it up in what they feel is morally superior justification ("fat cats" or what "everybody does it" or what have you). But they are doing it because they are cheap and can get away with it. The rest is just blah-blah-blah. Rats in a Skinner box, we are.

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## neil argonaut

Yes, I'd tend to agree with that, that whether it's right or wrong, folk will do it because they can. I'd say this also goes for those rightly or wrongly trying to get money from folk for pieces of copyrighted music.

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## MikeEdgerton

> I wasn't saying that he wasn't stealing because he didn't call it that, I was merely pointing out that it was you, not him, who called it stealing.


So, it was stealing even though he didn't call it that?

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## neil argonaut

> So, it was stealing even though he didn't call it that?


It was doing something that some folk consider stealing and some don't.

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## jaycat

And some folks don't go out of their way to broadcast that they're doing it!

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## Willie Poole

I would like to know how ASCAP/BMI pays out money to the writers who are supposed to get these royalties?   If a person has one song played in a month and another one has his played 200 times how do they know this with live bands...Or do they just split all of the money between ALL writers....It isn`t clear to me at all....

     Willie

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## Peter LaMorte

The first man who whistled
thought he had a wren in his mouth.
He went around all day
with his lips puckered,
afraid to swallow.

--"The First" by Wendell Berry

Brent,
So the fellow that thought he had a wren in his mouth, Did he have to pay the wren royalties.  :Whistling:  :Whistling:  :Whistling:  :Laughing:

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## neil argonaut

> I would like to know how ASCAP/BMI pays out money to the writers who are supposed to get these royalties?   If a person has one song played in a month and another one has his played 200 times how do they know this with live bands...Or do they just split all of the money between ALL writers....It isn`t clear to me at all....
> 
>      Willie


Don't quote me on this, but i'm sure someone on one of these threads said it was split on the basis of radio play, I suppose with the idea being that this will be roughly similar in proportion to live covers but much easier to monitor due to playlists etc, but this means that a genre like bluegrass which might have a far higher proportion of tunes being played in live sessions than on the radio, would inevitably lose out.

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## allenhopkins

> ...someone on one of these threads said it was split on the basis of radio play, I suppose with the idea being that this will be roughly similar in proportion to live covers but much easier to monitor due to playlists...


Apparently ASCAP uses an outfit called Mediaguide to monitor radio, TV, and internet broadcast playlists.  Don't know how they monitor "authorized" downloads (_e.g._ iTunes), which are considered "mechanical reproduction" rather than "performance," and thus command a lower royalty rate.

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## mandroid

AFAIK no copy right on chord changes, so I suppose like Charlie Parker, wrote his own melody line 
over the chord sequence of popular songs. and got a CYA, in the process.

 OK _Byrd_ is off topic on a BG thread.. sorry.. :Whistling:

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## JeffD

It is very frustrating. I don't know of recent developments, but back in the 80s I ran a coffeehouse. We were contacted by ASCAP/BMI (both separately or both in one phone call, I forget) that we needed to pay a fee in order to play owned tunes. We booked a lot of singer/song writers in those days, and all the performers played for pass the hat. We also had open mike nights etc. Most of the time the songs sung were originals, but occationally a performer might do something owned. ASCAP had not found that we had, or hadn't, in fact they had never been to or heard of our coffeehouse. Their point was that we might, and to cover ourselves we needed to pay them a fee and, if I remember correctly, a past fee for all the years we had been open before that point, and then they would gives us a door sticker, a certificate suitable for framing, and leave us alone.

I tried various ideas, like could we leave it up to the responsibility of the performer, could we monitor ourselves, keep a log, and dutifully pay for any owned tunes that were played, could we record every performance and send it to them and have them bill us for any tunes played, could we post a signed notifying everyone that it was coffeehouse policy not to allow performers to play tunes they do not own, could I...  No, no, no. They were adamant that they wanted a yearly fee, and did not want to come hear our performances, or see the size of our operation and this was the amount we owed and this was our yearly fee. 

I forget how much they wanted, but it was a lot to our tiny venue. I told them that much was impossible. So they asked us how much we could pay.  !!??!!

Now Mike I am 100% behind you, I believe someone that creates a piece of music should be paid for it, and unauthorized copying and desemination is theft. At the same time, there was something of the protection racket going on here, where ASCAP/BMI would agree to leave us alone if we paid them, but if not, we could get into trouble if an owned tune snuck through.

There had to, (has to?) be a better way.

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## barney 59

I forget how much they wanted, but it was a lot to our tiny venue. I told them that much was impossible. So they asked us how much we could pay.  !!??!!

Now Mike I am 100% behind you, I believe someone that creates a piece of music should be paid for it, and unauthorized copying and desemination is theft. At the same time, there was something of the protection racket going on here, where ASCAP/BMI would agree to leave us alone if we paid them, but if not, we could get into trouble if an owned tune snuck through.

There had to, (has to?) be a better way.[/QUOTE]

So what happened? Did you pay,if not what happened after that? ASCAP has an astonishing record for getting judgments ruled in their favor. I think that if they actually investigate and they go after some business that they are pretty likely to win. They probably contact any business that comes into their radar but I wonder how often they go the next big step for some very small venue that does not pay.

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## JeffD

> So what happened? Did you pay,if not what happened after that? ASCAP has an astonishing record for getting judgments ruled in their favor. I think that if they actually investigate and they go after some business that they are pretty likely to win. They probably contact any business that comes into their radar but I wonder how often they go the next big step for some very small venue that does not pay.


Well we didn't pay, didn't agree to anything. We took the chance. They called back every six months or so, and as I remember threatened all kinds of things. I think the biggest risk we ran was that if someone sang Puff the Magic Dragon or something we could end up owing on that and perhaps on some negotiated estimate of past performances. Scary stuff.  And what was more scary was that we who ran the coffeehouse could be personally liable. Other coffeehouses not much bigger than ours in neighboring towns got scared and caved in and bought ASCAP protection, and one coffeehouse went broke trying to keep up the payments, another applied for United Way money and other grant money to make ends meet.

Within a couple of years the coffeehouse died anyway, nothing to do with this issue, it was just that the bohemian coffeehouse went out of style for a few years as the swanky coffeehouse came into being.

I don't like paying "just in case". It should be based on something. Radio stations keep logs (or they used to), so allow us to keep a log and send in a few bucks now and again based on the log book. And if you want, audit our log book every so often. But to just assign a fee, and then when it was too high ask us what we could afford? Thats just not the right way to do business.

Again, I have no argument that the owners of the music are due thier money. I personally think the performer should be responsible for that, just as they are responsible for the owned tunes they cover on their CD. But OK, someone says the venue is responsible - then lets come up with something traceable to reality, something that makes sense.

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## jaycat

> I personally think the performer should be responsible for that, just as they are responsible for the owned tunes they cover on their CD.


Agreed. That's the only solution that makes sense.

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## Brent Hutto

There is no reason a venue can not charge the performers a pro data share of the ASCAP fee is there? Only the venue controls the performances. ASCAP can not monitor every time some anonymous singer walks up to an open mic and belts out a Dylan cover.

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## Pete Martin

I think back to how many places had live music in the 70's and 80's vs how many places have it now.  

My opinion is these fees have done more to kill live music than anything.

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## bingoccc

http://www.ascap.com/members/payment/

Worth a moment's time.

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## neil argonaut

> http://www.ascap.com/members/payment/
> 
> Worth a moment's time.


Yeah, well worth reading what they say on their site, I suppose everyone would be better reading that first rather than guessing what there policies are from second hand information.
Maybe i'm misunderstanding something, but it seems to say there that apart from "very limited exceptions" *writer's royalties "shall not be sold or otherwise disposed of."
*, so I'm wondering how the situation then has comne about where big companies have to be paid for royalties which they now own, or whether that somehow comes under the limited exceptions.

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## Bob Borzelleri

This thread had real promise when it sounded like NASCAR was the culprit.

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## albeham

Its seems to me that this is a self fulling role, or style of service. 

When someone makes a tune,song, etc, and plays it, we buy the CD,etc to support him/her.  Cool with that. 

What I have read is this ASCAP is a bullying , going to make you do, company.. I understand there needs to be a level of protection, laws that are out there already, that protect the licensed  songs,acts,etc. Cool with that....

 But how far do we need to have big brother doing this? I also this might have been a killer for a lot of great music, a killer for a new no-name to be known.  A lot of folks get there start by playing these little spot of music, and once known, play what the wrote.   The ASCAP is making money.. a lot of it.. and to do what with it..to make more money.. But I truly wonder how much do they make off of the backs of hard working folks to how much they say they pay out......

 Heck..am I am just a quite player of the mandolin...I hope i don't make it big..... or my kids.....Someone always wants your money.. 

...The new thing is the Underground movement...secret knocks and locations....why the ASCAP are watching you...1984..?? 

AL 

Rant rant rant .... yep got a tint hat on too.

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## MikeEdgerton

> ...Maybe i'm misunderstanding something, but it seems to say there that apart from "very limited exceptions" *writer's royalties "shall not be sold or otherwise disposed of."
> *, so I'm wondering how the situation then has comne about where big companies have to be paid for royalties which they now own, or whether that somehow comes under the limited exceptions.


Well, one very famous example of someone owning the rights to another's work was Michael Jackson owning the entire Lennon and McCartney catalog at one time. I'm assuming he was being paid for the performance of those songs. Maybe he owned the rights to reproduce the songs and not the rights to the actual performances or something.

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## Brent Hutto

It's not "Big Brother" any more than if a window on your house gets broken so you go across the street and make the daddy of the kid who broke it pay for a new window. 

1) Someone owns rights to a song. 

2) They assign the responsibility of collecting payment for use of the song to ASCAP.

3) ASCAP goes around knocking on doors asking for payment whereever someone has been performing songs they are collecting fees for.

4) Or in this case, after about the 100-millionth time a kid broke the window ASCAP is demanding daddy go ahead and pay up front to cover the next time. What an awful bunch of people, assuming just because they've been ripped off before they'll be ripped off again.

In an ideal world that kid would have come over and paid for your window on his own initiative. Unfortunately, most of the time someone has to go ask his daddy to pay up for him because the kid can't be trusted to do the right thing. We shouldn't need cops handing out tickets for speeding or lawyers suing hospitals for accidentally killing people either. In a perfect world. Which it ain't.

The biggest complaints seems to be about those places that convince the musicians to play for free and thereby expect they ought to get a free pass on the rights fees for songs that are performed. So if I get my kid to mow my grass for free, do I expect Lowe's to not charge me for a lawnmower? After all, the kid ain't making any money. I'm not making any money. I just want my grass mowed. For free.

So basically everybody's fine with living in an imperfect world as long as it isn't costing them money. Then they go crying for somebody to do something about it because they're getting ripped off. ASCAP is just "doing something about it" because without it every one of you whiners would gladly rip off whomever you pleased if they wrote a song you thought you could make a buck by performing. Or maybe you're all so honorable you'd mail Bob Dylan a nickel every time you do one of his songs...yeah, right.

ASCAP's goal is pretty simple. They either want their songwriters to get paid or they want their songwriter's songs not to be performed. I'm sure they'd prefer the former but if cheapskate venue owners choose the latter that is hardly ASCAP's fault.

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## jaycat

> Well, one very famous example of someone owning the rights to another's work was Michael Jackson owning the entire Lennon and McCartney catalog at one time. I'm assuming he was being paid for the performance of those songs. Maybe he owned the rights to reproduce the songs and not the rights to the actual performances or something.


I'm assuming that MJ bought the publishing rights. Don't think that means he would earn writer's royalties.

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## barney 59

> I think back to how many places had live music in the 70's and 80's vs how many places have it now.  
> 
> My opinion is these fees have done more to kill live music than anything.


But this isn't new. They've been doing this a long time and  and venues have been paying for a long time. There are maybe other factors if there is a decline in the number of places that play live music. Disc Jockeys come to mind. Fire regulations,Starbucks killing coffee houses, It seems in the SF Bay Area Starbucks must have a policy that wherever you are you are always in sight of a Starbucks even if your already in a Starbucks! or the fact that maybe live music doesn't draw a paying crowd or that a karaoki machine installed can make you the same money and always shows up on time.
Lots of rock and roll bars as far as I can tell. There are a lot of places that have live music in my area. Most of it I'm not interested in so I wouldn't go but it's out there. Seattle had a whole grunge music scene of their own,is that over now?

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## MikeEdgerton

> I'm assuming that MJ bought the publishing rights. Don't think that means he would earn writer's royalties.


I think you're right about that. It would be interesting to see exactly what those rights entail. Who gets money from what.

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## barney 59

> I'm assuming that MJ bought the publishing rights. Don't think that means he would earn writer's royalties.


Paul McCartney is still one of highest earning entertainers year after year so he must still be getting something.

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## MikeEdgerton

> My opinion is these fees have done more to kill live music than anything.


I think the advent of DJ's has done more to kill live music than fees ever could. Amazingly enough people are willing to pay more money to a guy that is in essence pumping music out of his iPod than they are to pay people to actually play music. That phenomena didn't happen because of fees.

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## MikeEdgerton

> Paul McCartney is still one of highest earning entertainers year after year so he must still be getting something.


Sure, he's still performing. The Beatles probably still sell more records in a year than some artists that are getting good airtime.

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## JeffD

> There is no reason a venue can not charge the performers a pro data share of the ASCAP fee is there? Only the venue controls the performances. ASCAP can not monitor every time some anonymous singer walks up to an open mic and belts out a Dylan cover.


Thats easier said than done. Back when I ran the coffee house we raised as much as we could for the performers by our aggressive and creative advertising of the gig, to get enough people. That way the passed hat filled, and the artist could sell CDs, etc. The coffeehouse itself only made money over the counter.

The choice just wasn't there.

If ASCAP is taking performers money (dues) in order to collect the artists royalty every time a tune is played, then they are responsible for finding where and when their artists tune is played. Yea its a big job. But they are getting paid for it. We all get paid to do hard jobs.

I remember radio stations used to keep logs, I think they still do. If they use a trust and occationally verify approach with a radio station, why not extend that to the live venue.

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## JeffD

> 3) ASCAP goes around knocking on doors asking for payment whereever someone has been performing songs they are collecting fees for.
> .


Well that is what would be ideal. What actually was happening, or seemed to be happening,  was that they would call on any place of any size that had a stage, and strong arm them into paying for the privilege of being left alone.

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## Brent Hutto

Because it's an order of magnitude easier to "verify" a radio station. You pay someone to listen to all the radio stations in town for a couple of days. Compare that to paying someone to visit every coffeeshop, restaurant, bar, dive, club, music store in town at the hours they are likely performing live music. 

And as I understanding it, they do trust-and-verify. If you say nobody there performs copyrighted tunes they will trust that you don't owe you money. Then if they catch you allowing copyrighted tunes (verify) they will sue you out of business with extreme prejudice. 

Basically they trust radio stations more than they trust coffeehouses and they trust performers not at all. Sounds about right.

Every time I've been to an Open Mic or Amateur Night at a place with a "NO ASCAP! NO BMI!" sign posted it has taken no more than 20-30 minutes for the first obviously copyrighted song to be performed. No matter the style of music (unless it's Classical and maybe not even then) it is impossible for performers to lay off the "owned" material. And that's because they know *those are the songs people will listen to*. If the stuff didn't have a tangible value nobody would be able to charge for it.

P.S. So a coffeehouse that doesn't take in enough money to pay its electric bill is just too bad. They will go out of business when the power company shuts the lights off. But if they complain about not having enough money to pay for the rights to the music being performed, it's the big bag ASCAP ruining the local music scene.

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## jaycat

> Paul McCartney is still one of highest earning entertainers year after year so he must still be getting something.


Yeah, he's making money off of the Buddy Holly catalog he bought!

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## allenhopkins

There are author's rights and publishing rights, not identical.  Many successful songwriters either set up their own "publishing companies," or assign the publishing rights to an established publishing company for a consideration.  Some of the people associated with the Beatles (Lennon, McCartney, Brian Epstein and Dick James) established Northern Songs to be the publishing company for Beatles songs.  This became a public company, and was sold and re-sold, although Lennon and McCartney tried unsuccessfully to get control of their own compositions; they didn't have sufficient stock in Northern Songs to prevent its sale to Associated Television in the UK.  Eventually Michael Jackson purchased Northern Songs, merged its catalog with Sony's publishing arm, forming Sony/ATV Music Publishing.  Northern Songs went out of business about 15 years ago, and I guess Sony has the publishing rights to the Beatles' songs now.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, (#71), ASCAP has employed an outfit called MediaGuide to monitor broadcast and webcast playlists.

I understand the resentment that many grassroots musicians have against ASCAP and its ilk, and share it to some extent.  I buzz around playing music that's under copyright at, say, nursing homes, which presumably have no ASCAP/BMI etc. licenses, and feel not a whit of guilt about it.  But, on the other hand, if a place is in the music *business,* as the clubs that rely on music to draw people in, charge admission, advertise, etc. are, then paying songwriters and publishers for the use of their intellectual property is a legit business cost.

Where it gets fuzzy is the small-time coffeehouse, the bar with the once-a-month backroom jam, the church basement open mic.  I truly can see both sides of the question.  However, it'll be a fairly long time before ASCAP etc. get around to dunning every folk club and coffeehouse in the world.  And if things get really unpleasant, more than just a few instances, I'd anticipate that the grassroots folk will seek redress of the legal situation.

And I honestly think the decline in live music venues is not ASCAP's fault, except in a few isolated circumstances.  I think it's the economics of live presentation vs. DJ's, recorded music, big-screen TV's to watch the NFL, etc.  Too bad, but sorta where a lot of trends are headed.

And also, I think the problem of people *not* being properly compensated for others' use of their intellectual property, is a much larger problem than the hassling ASCAP/BMI/etc. may be doing.  And I speak as a consistent offender.

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## jaycat

I wonder if there really has been a decline in venues. Are there any hard data to support this? For many of us, there's a lot less music out there that we care to see than there used to be . . . but are there really fewer clubs?

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## MikeEdgerton

> I wonder if there really has been a decline in venues. Are there any hard data to support this? For many of us, there's a lot less music out there that we care to see than there used to be . . . but are there really fewer clubs?


I can believe there has been a decline of venues that will pay live musicians to perform but it wouldn't be because of the fees, it would be because people are happy to watch the big screen TV's and listen to the aforementioned DJ's. Just as the mandolin went out of favor, and the banjo did the same in the 1900's, live music has been a victim of the times. I would suspect that at some time in the future it will come back into style again.

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## jaycat

And then, there's The Economy. It's not just music venues that are going under.

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## Bernie Daniel

> "_Creative people should have the right to be compensated for their products, just like electricians, carpenters, and video-game developers. How those rights are enforced, that's a question that raises a lot of the issues we're discussing_."
> 
> Early in my career I designed and built some decontamination equipment for use at a government facility.  My company and myself were paid to to the job.  It sure would be nice if I continued to get paid every time they used that equipment, or trained someone on it, or took pictures, or thought about it.  Or how about auto mechanics; they could get paid to fix your brakes, and then get royalties every time you use those brakes.  It'd be neat for plumbers if you paid them when they replaced your toilet, and then paid them again every time you flush it.  I have an even better idea - ASCrAP could _fine_ composers that write lousy, unimaginative drivel for wide spread commercial broadcast.  They'd have to pony up every time their crummy song got played.



I don't know about the commercials but I think a lot of us who spent our careers on the technical side of the world and who have invented and discovered things -- and  who never get any extended credit or enumeration for it would certainly agree with your general premise.   

When scientists and engineers find new solutions or improve technologies with their brains it is not enough to declare "copywrited" and then get "royalties".  They typically receive nothing as a complicated patent process compete with lawyers is the only path to that. 

But then of course when a scientist invents he/she is not being "creative" don't you know?  Tinged with a tad of sarcasm.

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## Paul Kotapish

> I would like to know how ASCAP/BMI pays out money to the writers who are supposed to get these royalties?   If a person has one song played in a month and another one has his played 200 times how do they know this with live bands...Or do they just split all of the money between ALL writers....It isn`t clear to me at all....


The algorithm used to calculate live-performance royalties (as distinguished from publishing and mechanical royalties) depends heavily on monitoring radio and other media broadcast playlists. 

More airplay = a bigger slice of the pie. 

Lots of airplay can also make the artist more popular, but that percentage incentive is just as significant.

That's one reason why getting a lot of airplay is essential to a songwriter's fortunes, and it's a big part of the reason that so many radio stations have such short--and tightly controlled--playlists. Payola may be illegal, but there are plenty of sticks and carrots out there being used to influence playlists.

And there are plenty of artists out there whose songs are getting covered on stages all over the world but won't see the proper proportional compensation because they are not getting heavy airplay. Think Richard Thompson, for example. His songs are covered by hundreds or even thousands of bands and artists on a regular basis, but outside of a handful of radio programs in select markets (the SF Bay Area is one), you will rarely hear his songs on the radio.

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## eadg145

So...how many folks here performing in bands in paying clubs belong to the American Federation of Musicians? ...

  I was fascinated when I moved from one coast to the other to see the difference.  Where I'd come from, all the musicians belonged to the AFofM, and clubs and other venues acknowledged it and abided by the conventions.  Where I live now, it's almost unheard of.  Not exactly the same topic, but I think they're pretty closely related.  Where do YOU choose to draw the line?

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## Brent Hutto

Paul,

To me that's the real idiocy of the system. It reifies radio play as the de facto make-or-break element of getting paid. Which for many types of music is just insane.

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## Pete Martin

I've just had a number of venue owners tell me they don't have music anymore because they can't afford the fees from ASCAP.  Mostly these were venues doing non popular music (Bluegrass, Jazz, Folk).  

I really doubt that the writers of those tunes performed in those venues will ever see much money from the performance royalties from ASCAP and BMI.  I personally know a number of writers who have songs recorded and performed by a number of folks around the country that haven't recieved a dime from ASCAP or BMI.  What really gets me going is EVERYBODY pays in, only a certain small percentage see the payOUTS.

I wonder what happens to the rest of the $???   Hmmm...

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## Brent Hutto

Like everything in the music business most of the money sticks to the hands of those who haven't written, played or sang a lick. David Grier said on a recording I have "I formed my own record label, decided to steal from myself for a change".

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## JeffD

> P.S. So a coffeehouse that doesn't take in enough money to pay its electric bill is just too bad. They will go out of business when the power company shuts the lights off. But if they complain about not having enough money to pay for the rights to the music being performed, it's the big bag ASCAP ruining the local music scene.


I was more than happy to pay for any and all tunes that were owned. I would have contributed my own funds to help out if need be. But ASCAP never heard us, never heard of us, and just made up a number, and it was a large number.  There was no attempt to find out how much we really owed. Or to even estimate it based on the type and number of performers we had. Thats what got me.

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## JeffD

> Every time I've been to an Open Mic or Amateur Night at a place with a "NO ASCAP! NO BMI!" sign posted it has taken no more than 20-30 minutes for the first obviously copyrighted song to be performed. No matter the style of music (unless it's Classical and maybe not even then) it is impossible for performers to lay off the "owned" material. And that's because they know *those are the songs people will listen to*. If the stuff didn't have a tangible value nobody would be able to charge for it..


You are correct. That is why those signs just don't work. We wanted to put up a sign that said that No ASCAP, No BMI, and the performer of an owned song was responsible for any royalty.  That wouldn't work either.

The performer, who usually was not an ASCAP or BMI member, didn't care to keep track of what they sang or pay royalties for singing it, so the venue got stuck. We would gladly keep track, and submit the log every year for inspection. 

I wasn't trying to get away with anything. I wanted to pay what the performer legitmately owed them. But I was not going to pay a random huge amount based on what someone says on the phone I should pay.

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## MikeEdgerton

> Like everything in the music business most of the money sticks to the hands of those who haven't written, played or sang a lick. David Grier said on a recording I have "I formed my own record label, decided to steal from myself for a change".


I'm pretty close to the industry due to one of my children being in that business. From what I can see not too much of the money sticks to the hands of the record labels either, with the exception of a few very large ones. In the old days you had to have resources to put out a record, now anybody with a computer can produce a CD. Times have changed.

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## mandolirius

> I've just had a number of venue owners tell me they don't have music anymore because they can't afford the fees from ASCAP.  Mostly these were venues doing non popular music (Bluegrass, Jazz, Folk).  
> 
> I really doubt that the writers of those tunes performed in those venues will ever see much money from the performance royalties from ASCAP and BMI.  I personally know a number of writers who have songs recorded and performed by a number of folks around the country that haven't recieved a dime from ASCAP or BMI.  What really gets me going is EVERYBODY pays in, only a certain small percentage see the payOUTS.
> 
> I wonder what happens to the rest of the $???   Hmmm...


As a working musician, I can echo Pete's experience in Canada. Bar owner and managers tell you this, so it's not speculation. Licensing fees are not the only reason but they are definitely contributing. We have very tough drinking/driving laws here (so tough they are now under a court challenge) and that's had an impact on the bottom line for many establishments, as did the smoking bans. I'm not against these measures but the point is that times are tough in the bar and restaurant biz these days, at least around here and one more financial hit is one too many for a lot of them.

Our organization in Canada is called Socan and it is notorious for taking care of certain big name artists while doing absolutely nothing for the majority of working musicians. It's a costly, lavish organization with well-paid members who's job is mostly to fly around at taxpayers expense, stay in luxury hotels and harrass bar owners and musicians. Needless to say they are widely despised as the blood-sucking scum they are.

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## MikeEdgerton

> Our organization in Canada is called Socan ... It's a costly, lavish organization with well-paid members who's job is mostly to fly around at taxpayers expense....


It's a governmental organization?

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## allenhopkins

> It's a governmental organization?


Apparently not: *SOCAN English website.*

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## Tune

> Maybe i'm misunderstanding something, but it seems to say there that apart from "very limited exceptions" writer's royalties "shall not be sold or otherwise disposed of."


ASCAP maintains that it's merely an agent, and its authority to distribute royalties is limited by the scope of the agency agreement. Its legal counsel has pointed to that language as intended to establish a contractual limitation on royalties they administer from being reached by divorce judgments, debt collectors, gambling recoupment, and even bankruptcy trustee requests and court orders (trustees and courts may have good reason to disagree as to the language's efficacy).

However, there is no restriction if instead of directly assigning royalties (merely a right to receive payments), complete ownership of the underlying copyright (and following with copyright, indirectly the right to receive royalty payments) may properly be assigned.

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## MikeEdgerton

> Apparently not: *SOCAN English website.*


OK, just trying to figure out how they are spending taxpayer money if they aren't a governmental agency.

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## Mike Bunting

posted in error

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## mandolirius

> OK, just trying to figure out how they are spending taxpayer money if they aren't a governmental agency.


Of course the website doesn't mention it but Socan is subsidized by the federal gov't. Aside from that, we give them money every time we buy blank cd's (or tapes if anyone still uses those). Basically it's a useless layer of beaurocracy that does nothing useful and exists for its own benefit.

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## Polecat

> I wasn't trying to get away with anything. I wanted to pay what the performer legitmately owed them. But I was not going to pay a random huge amount based on what someone says on the phone I should pay.


I think that pretty much sums up the core of the problem. No-one with even the slightest sense of justice would suggest an artist/composer should not be remunerated for the fruits of his labour, but the means by which these agencies go about their business leads one to suspect that their main interests lie elsewhere than those of the artists they claim to be representing. A little internet research about the german GEMA mainly from this website reveals the following: The top 3 bosses of GEMA recieve a salary of 380,000  each (more than the German National Bank pays!). In 2009  GEMA paid 62.99% of the monies it passed on (not the total revenue) to 5.19% of its registered members. In calculating the dues to be paid, GEMA is not above including the area of the toilets and the kitchen in the total area of a bar, with the argument that "people might be listening from there, too", which is technically correct but strikes me as absurd, designed only to maximise revenue, especially in the case of a small bar. I could go on, but I think the point is made. Although the principle is sound, the means of enforcing it are so profoundly flawed that it is not unreasonable to question the existence of these agencies in their current forms. As regards the virtual world, I think the idea of creative commons licences is on the right track. If an analogue to that could be found for the real world, we would, in my opinion, be on the right track.

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## MikeEdgerton

> Of course the website doesn't mention it but Socan is subsidized by the federal gov't....


There's a good gig.  :Cool: 

ASCAP may seem nefarious but they can't lay claim to that perk.

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## Psyberbilly

If I am understanding this correctly , air play is the most easily monitored ( if not most accurate ) gauge used to determine who gets what percentage of the fees collected . So a venue such as started the discussion , which host jams , etc. or features groups which perform copyrighted yet obscure and not hugely popular music pays their fee to the licensing organization. ASCAP/BMI takes their cut , and pays out to the artists an amount based on this popularity logarithm , which means that Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift get the lions share ( when in all probability not one of there songs was performed ) while my friend Chris Wall , who may have had 5 or 6 songs performed at some of the jams I attend , gets a minuscule amount , if any at all ? 

I have many friends who are excellent and accomplished songwriters and performers , that is how they make their living. I fully support their right to be compensated for and reap the rewards for their talents and hard work . Although no system could be perfect , I think most people that have a problem with the current system seem to sense the arbitrary nature of the way things work.

It seems to me that the conundrum is this , there is a huge difference between the business model & cost/benefit ratio of a small neighborhood bar that hosts a weekly accoustic jam session and a large venue that makes its living by booking cover bands 7 nights a week . A one size fits all system seems to IMHO violate a certain sense of fairness . It sometimes seems as though it is another case where the system is configured so that a certain few can clean up , and others are left with the scraps.

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## Paul Kotapish

I think most of the folks who have built financial success composing, performing, and recording the kinds of marginally popular music many of us here favor have done so by more-or-less stepping outside the industry and building their own business model. 

David Grisman leaps to mind, for example. David Lindley is another guy that took on complete control of his output, including a full line of "official bootlegs" of his shows, and Richard Thompson also sells a full line of his own live recordings through his own website. It looks like Mike Compton is doing much the same with his _Rotten Taters_ project.

It's a lot more hassle to run your own business, but the potential for holding onto most of the actual profit from your own efforts is much, much higher, so it's a worthwhile approach, especially if you are never going to be the next Lady Gaga.

The problem with the current ASCAP/BMI model isn't that it's trying to collect fees for live music, it's that it doesn't have sufficient gradations in their fee schedule to accomodate marginal businesses like mom-and-pop coffeehouses and other small venues with only occasional live music.

If enough heavyweight music-industry ganged up on ASCAP and demanded a change in the rules, it could happen, but I can't imagine that Jay-Z is too concerned about preserving the weekly bluegrass jams at my corner coffeehouse.

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## barney 59

> I was more than happy to pay for any and all tunes that were owned. I would have contributed my own funds to help out if need be. But ASCAP never heard us, never heard of us, and just made up a number, and it was a large number.  There was no attempt to find out how much we really owed. Or to even estimate it based on the type and number of performers we had. Thats what got me.


But didn't you post that when you said that you couldn't afford the suggested rate they asked how much you could afford? That sounds like a negotiation. I wonder what would have happened if you pursued that course?

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## allenhopkins

I believe ASCAP _will_ negotiate with smaller venues, non-profits, etc.  Haven't taken part in such negotiations, so I don't know how hard-ball they are.

*Some* revenue's better than *no* revenue, and a sponsor just dropping music entirely.  Remember, however, that it's not just a question of *live* music.  Even broadcast of recordings through a sound system is subject to licensing.  So a bar owner who says, "Fine!  I'll just stop booking live acts, and so there!" will be met with the response, "Well, ya better turn off your sound system too..."

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## Sheryl McDonald

> So...how many folks here performing in bands in paying clubs belong to the American Federation of Musicians? ..


Use to be, until I realized none of the gigs I was getting were union gigs....

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## Sheryl McDonald

This is an interesting thread, and I can see both sides.  One part of me says that singer-songwriters who have not had some claim to fame might be happy to have their tunes being played publicly, by someone other than them. The more exposure they get, the more they might turn into a national hit.  On the other hand, they need to get what's rightfully due them.

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## JeffD

> But didn't you post that when you said that you couldn't afford the suggested rate they asked how much you could afford? That sounds like a negotiation. I wonder what would have happened if you pursued that course?


Because at the time it absolutely astonsished me. A person calls on the phone, says we owe them a whole bunch of money, based on nothing, admitting that they have no basis for the fee, have no idea what kind of place we run, what kind of music gets played, much less how many owned songs get played that we owe royalties on.  "Hey, pay us umpty ump dollars because you may owe us some money - oh ok, how much can you afford to pay us?"  

If they had called me and said "we see that your venue had these 17 songs played last month that are owned, and that comes to this amount, and times 12 estimating that last month was typical you owe us so much a year" I would say fine. And if I could not pay it I would negotiate some agreement or work it out. Or any kind of attempt at a reasonable estimate based on something.

They admitted that they could not answer my basic question. "How much do we owe?" They wanted me to ask them "How much to make you go away." And I wouldn't play it that way.

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## JeffD

> Even broadcast of recordings through a sound system is subject to licensing.  So a bar owner who says, "Fine!  I'll just stop booking live acts, and so there!" will be met with the response, "Well, ya better turn off your sound system too..."


Oh heck yea! Don't be playing a CD as background music.

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## JeffD

> This is an interesting thread, and I can see both sides.  One part of me says that singer-songwriters who have not had some claim to fame might be happy to have their tunes being played publicly, by someone other than them. The more exposure they get, the more they might turn into a national hit.  On the other hand, they need to get what's rightfully due them.


I knew, back in those days, many musicians who did not care for royalties, not yet anyway. They wanted the buzz. They wanted to be heard and for folks to talk about them. But I could not even play their CDs in my coffeehouse as background music, even with their permission, without the ASCAP BMI license.

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## JeffD

> I believe ASCAP _will_ negotiate with smaller venues, non-profits, etc.  Haven't taken part in such negotiations, so I don't know how hard-ball they are.
> 
> *Some* revenue's better than *no* revenue, and a sponsor just dropping music entirely.


But my impression at the time was that ASCAP BMI really did not care about that. They weren't, it seemed to me, working on the behalf of artists or of music. For example, they weren't negotiating an amount you could pay, in order to asure that you stayed alive to host musicians. They were trying to figure how many golden eggs they could get without killing you.

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## barney 59

It seems with a great many things,agencies and institutions,even schools and hospitals the purpose of what they are doing changes from their primary purpose to just keeping themselves well cared for and fed. Their business is supposed to be to insure that artists and writers get their proper royalties but maybe it has corrupted into just making sure that they get their own paychecks and that becomes the purpose that justifies their existence. 
If they actually had a sense of extracting the largest amount of money that doesn't kill you that's much better than them extracting an amount and they didn't care if it killed you. 
 I think the main problem here is that many of us here do not play or do not listen to  mainstream forms of music. Since we're paying for ASCAP/BMI services whenever we go to see live performances it would seem only fair that that money would at least go to the people that write the music we like. 
   Maybe someone knows but I've often suspected that some of the larger radio networks such as Clear Channel might own catalogs of music and that is why they play the same stuff over and over year in and year out. It would possibly be cheaper for them to own the rights than to pay the royalties.

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## bingoccc

This fellow had an interesting time dealing with the issue.  Please take a few moments.
http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/phillips.html

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## Brent Hutto

Right. If nobody in that venue ever performs a piece of material whose rights are managed by ASCAP or BMI then of course they don't owe ASCAP or BMI any fees. That long story consisted of basically having this fact confirmed. Note that it did not result in the venue in question hiring him to resume performing. 

The problem is when the venue owner feels he can not trust every musician to literally and absolutely never perform an owned song. If it happens even occasionally, they are open to liability for unlicensed use of owned music. Like a lot of things in our ridiculously litigious society, what drives the venue's business decisions is not their actual behavior but rather trying to avoid even an insignificant chance of some actionable behavior. Because the penalty of being sued out of business for something beyond their control is an avoidable risk.

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## MikeEdgerton

> ...Maybe someone knows but I've often suspected that some of the larger radio networks such as Clear Channel might own catalogs of music and that is why they play the same stuff over and over year in and year out. It would possibly be cheaper for them to own the rights than to pay the royalties.


Well actually many things in this world are not what they seem to be. When you walk into a grocery store cereal aisle you'll see a lot of brands from a couple of big companies and you might be able to find a smaller company's brand someplace  in small quantities. That's because the bigger brands pay the store a fee for "shelf space". That fee gets their products displayed up front and in large quantities. Although the days of *Payola* are over, the same thing happens in the radio world, it's just done differently.

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## neil argonaut

> Right. If nobody in that venue ever performs a piece of material whose rights are managed by ASCAP or BMI then of course they don't owe ASCAP or BMI any fees. That long story consisted of basically having this fact confirmed. Note that it did not result in the venue in question hiring him to resume performing.


As far as I could see, it didn't say whether he got his job back after winning the case; I had supposed he probably did, but he doesn't actually say either way.

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## Brent Hutto

> As far as I could see, it didn't say whether he got his job back after winning the case; I had supposed he probably did, but he doesn't actually say either way.


Last paragraph, very end of the story...




> But I never did get my job back. The restaurant owners have decided not to have any live performances or to play any recorded music. To them it is not worth the hassle. The customers must settle for radio and television. And I have not found such a lucrative job since. Such is the legacy of BMI.

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## jaycat

> Like a lot of things in our ridiculously litigious society, what drives the venue's business decisions is not their actual behavior but rather trying to avoid even an insignificant chance of some actionable behavior. Because the penalty of being sued out of business for something beyond their control is an avoidable risk.


I have to agree with Brent. Despite my repulsion at the alleged strong arm behavior, I'm not sure I understand how buying a license at an average cost of $500 a year makes having live music or playing recorded music "not worth the hassle." They probably spend more than that on paper napkins.

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## Jim

If I have a small venue and my choice was to pay a $500 a year fee so I could have Live music weekly or a Flat screen TV , I'd probably have to go with the TV, and I dislike TV and LOVE music. The Thing is you get more bang for your buck with the TV and can turn it off or change the channel if your customers don't like it. You don't have to pay it at the end of a slow night or a good night. I have played original and cover music in venues of many different sizes.Original doen't really draw. In bar bands you need to play a cover to get the people dancing then if they are you might be able to keep them going with an original , depends on the crowd and of coarse the quality of your original material. Many of the venues I have played in Southern Colo no longer have live music and most of the blame ASCAP fees. These guys weren't getting rich in the first place so it didn't take much to make them stop hiring. I'm all for writers getting compensated for their creations, I hope I am myself someday ,but ASCAP just gets the doors closed to performing musicians. Learning to play other peoples music is more or less how we became musicians I wonder how many of us would have persued it if we were told we couldn't play these for others. I'm also interested in Alans situation where a song was lifted and played for many people. Obviously the writer should be credited, but having your material played for lots of people is a good thing. In closing this ramble I have one more point, I have purchased a great number of CDs tapes & records be cause I heard a cover of a song, liked it and went out and bought the CD. I bet I'm not alone in that. Should the cover band be paid by the original artist for helping sell their material?

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## Rodney Riley

Tee hee Mike... Merry Christmas ya little critter... :Laughing:   :Laughing:   :Laughing:

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## Brent Hutto

Well, it's a lot easier to the tell the musicians "I can't afford those darned ASCAP fees" than it is to say "I can get the TV to work for free so I'm not paying you guys any more". What some guys says as he's blowing you off does not necessarily reflect the reality of the situation. It's certainly a ready-made excuse, though.

The old "workers comp" excuse works, too. Dump all them salaries and blame it on the government wanting you to pay into the workers compensation system for them. You do save a few bucks on the workers comp but you save even more by not having to make payroll. Nobody wants to be the bad guy and there's always some Big Brother around to blame.

It's one thing is you're some barely-even-a-business place that doesn't charge a cover and doesn't pay the musicians. Even a modest music-rights fee is, relative to your shoestring budget, a potential make-or-break deal. But for some place that's selling food, drinks, paying sky high rent and shelling out for professional musicians several nights a week don't tell me you'd go out of business if you ponied up a few hundred or even a couple thousand a year to cover music rights.

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## Jim

Brent, I do agree" I can't afford the ASCAP fee" is as much an excuse not to pay for live music as anything. Especially if it wasn't making you much money anyway.

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## allenhopkins

Yeah, I have a bit less sympathy for the club owner who stops booking music acts because he/she's worried about putting up $20-25 per week for an ASCAP license -- than I do for the facility that hosts a jam, or the church-basement open-mic pass-the-hat coffeehouse.  I co-host a monthly concert series at a public library in a little town south of Rochester.  While we don't exactly "charge admission," there's a suggested $5 donation, and performers get maybe $75-150 after our expenses (mostly coffee and cookies).  The library board could get dunned by a licensing organization, since we make no effort to exclude licensed repertoire, and a lot of it gets played there.

Would it be worth their while to go after a public library in a small town for a few hundred bucks?  Well, maybe worth it to send a dunning letter.  Actually pursue a lawsuit?  Unlikely.  We all know that there are tens of thousands of musical performance venues that slide under the licensing agencies' radar, and will never get a visit or a summons.  A larger-scale club that books known acts, advertises, and pays significantly, could well be targeted.  Even a local government that sponsors a summer concert series in the town park, might get a visit.  Sure there are examples of corner bars getting a visit from ASCAP/BMI, but I doubt they make up one percent of the places that sponsor "grassroots music."

Not worth getting into a panic about it, as much as we may resent the actions of organizations that apparently are mainly for the benefit of established commercial acts, not so much the rest of us.  I do agree that the "can't have live music because ASCAP/BMI will come after me" argument may be more pretext than substance.

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## barney 59

I tried to look up ASCAP fees but they don't list fees on their website. I did find out that similar type venues do not pay more in one place than they do in another. I wondered about that. I then tried to find some other postings and found one coffee house owner trying to avoid a $300-$400 annual fee. I found other references to clubs paying something like $2.50 a day. I did find an ASCAP rate chart for municipalities that seemed to start at $300 for under 50,000 population and topped out at $61000,so bend over NY if you want to do concerts in the park. Paul Simon though is BMI so you have to pay them as well,oh but then it was Paul Simon in the park singing his own songs --no fee! If these things are true then it seems to me that it's just a whine or excuse to get out of having music or maybe just to have something to whine about. A beer or a latte a day or even two does not seem too excessive to me.

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## JeffD

> I have to agree with Brent. Despite my repulsion at the alleged strong arm behavior, I'm not sure I understand how buying a license at an average cost of $500 a year makes having live music or playing recorded music "not worth the hassle." They probably spend more than that on paper napkins.


Well my experience, back in the middle 80s, the fee they wanted was a lot more than $500.00 A lot more.

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## Earl Gamage

> Yeah, I have a bit less sympathy for the club owner who stops booking music acts because he/she's worried about putting up $20-25 per week for an ASCAP license -- than I do for the facility that hosts a jam, or the church-basement open-mic pass-the-hat coffeehouse.  I co-host a monthly concert series at a public library in a little town south of Rochester.  While we don't exactly "charge admission," there's a suggested $5 donation, and performers get maybe $75-150 after our expenses (mostly coffee and cookies).  The library board could get dunned by a licensing organization, since we make no effort to exclude licensed repertoire, and a lot of it gets played there.
> 
> Would it be worth their while to go after a public library in a small town for a few hundred bucks?  Well, maybe worth it to send a dunning letter.  Actually pursue a lawsuit?  Unlikely.  We all know that there are tens of thousands of musical performance venues that slide under the licensing agencies' radar, and will never get a visit or a summons.  A larger-scale club that books known acts, advertises, and pays significantly, could well be targeted.  Even a local government that sponsors a summer concert series in the town park, might get a visit.  Sure there are examples of corner bars getting a visit from ASCAP/BMI, but I doubt they make up one percent of the places that sponsor "grassroots music."
> 
> Not worth getting into a panic about it, as much as we may resent the actions of organizations that apparently are mainly for the benefit of established commercial acts, not so much the rest of us.  I do agree that the "can't have live music because ASCAP/BMI will come after me" argument may be more pretext than substance.


I have seen them go after jams in restaurants so I think you can bet they will go after you where performers are actually getting paid when they find out about it.

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## Polecat

> Not worth getting into a panic about it, as much as we may resent the actions of organizations that apparently are mainly for the benefit of established commercial acts, not so much the rest of us.  I do agree that the "can't have live music because ASCAP/BMI will come after me" argument may be more pretext than substance.


2 Months ago I would have agreed with you, but having the german agency effectively close down my band's regular monthly gig has given me a different perspective. Rereading the thread, I have the distinct impression that the standpoint adopted by the various posters is directly related to the contact they have had with such organizations. If they have come into contact with ASCAP/BMI/GEMA/whatever, their experience has been negative, and the opinion they express is coloured by this. It would be interesting to know if any forum members have had contact with one of these agencies that left a positive impression. 
Jim Richmond makes an interesting point about "cover bands helping to sell original artists material" - at least two out of our (alas, erstwhile) audience went out and bought Al Stewart's "Zero she flies" album as a result of my singing "My Enemies have sweet voices", came up to me in the break and asked where they could find the song. Obviously, the idea of Mr. Stewart paying me as a song-plugger is totally unworkable, but as (I suspect) probably the only band in Germany playing that particular song, surely a kind of quid pro quo arrangement of leaving one another mutually alone is not unreasonable.

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## Brent Hutto

There are a lot of things that would be reasonable in a one-on-one negotiation or collaboration that can not be scaled up to every musician and every song in the world. 

I am under no illusions that ASCAP or any other agency of that type are good people to deal with. In fact, I'd be gobsmacked if they behaved in any way more enlightened than simply trying to squeeze every last penny out of every venue they can get their hands on. That is the nature of large organizations whose interests over time diverge from the interest of the people they were originally serving.

And it is certain plausible that absent any enforcement whatsoever of song copyrights there might be more places at which live music is performed. But just as ASCAP can reasonably be accused of going beyond the original rationale for their existence and selfishly causing some venues to forgo live music it is also reasonable to point out that a performer who wants to perform covers of popular, copyrighted material while paying absolutely nothing for use of those songs is selfishly acting his his own interest without regard to how it affects others.

At some point, everyone selfishly prefers that his own interests be served. At that juncture all that matters is which one finds himself on the pointy end of the stick. The current intellectual property laws in the Western world keep the stick in the hands of the music industry and not any individuals. That's all I can say without delving into political implications of that observation...

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## mandolirius

> But just as ASCAP can reasonably be accused of going beyond the original rationale for their existence and selfishly causing some venues to forgo live music it is also reasonable to point out that a performer who wants to perform covers of popular, copyrighted material while paying absolutely nothing for use of those songs is selfishly acting his his own interest without regard to how it affects others.


When said performer is barely able to feed themselves, it's reasonable to gouge him or her for copywrite fees for a live performance? What about street performers, maybe they should be gone after as well. No, there's nothing reasonable about this system. It's a cash-grab for a few already very wealthy artists and another layer of useless, self-perpetuating beaurocracy.

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## mandolirius

> Not worth getting into a panic about it, as much as we may resent the actions of organizations that apparently are mainly for the benefit of established commercial acts, not so much the rest of us.  I do agree that the "can't have live music because ASCAP/BMI will come after me" argument may be more pretext than substance.


You can decide for yourself wether to panic or not but you're dead wrong, at least around these parts. They will come after anyone. They've shown up at bluegrass festivals, wanting every performer's set list. They've shut down unpaid jam sessions in restaurants and pubs. These are the types of organizations that need to justify their own existence and so will always look for new targets.

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## Brent Hutto

Never mind.

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## Pete Martin

> Well my experience, back in the middle 80s, the fee they wanted was a lot more than $500.00 A lot more.



My experience as well.

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## Polecat

> ...it is also reasonable to point out that a performer who wants to perform covers of popular, copyrighted material while paying absolutely nothing for use of those songs is selfishly acting his his own interest without regard to how it affects others.
> 
> At some point, everyone selfishly prefers that his own interests be served. At that juncture all that matters is which one finds himself on the pointy end of the stick. The current intellectual property laws in the Western world keep the stick in the hands of the music industry and not any individuals. That's all I can say without delving into political implications of that observation...


Brent, I would agree 100% with this statement with the addition of two words:* For Profit*. That, in my understanding of them is the point of copyright laws - to prevent individuals using other peoples' intellectual property for personal gain without recompensing the original creator of said property. I do not perform for profit, more out of a love of the music and the pleasure it gives me to share it (OK, and standing up in front of people and getting admired for what I do gives me a buzz as well). The landlord is also not making anything worth mentioning - even if the ten or fifteen extra customers who come in got raging drunk (which would p**** me off intensely), given the profit margins of a pub, that happening once a month would make no great difference in the greater scheme of things - by offering us a platform (I approached him, not the other way round), he is doing his bit for the cultural life of one small town in South Germany. Nobody was lining their pockets, a few people were getting a little monthly enjoyment, and now it has been stopped. Was it selfish? we were doubtless contravening the letter of the law, but were we contravening the spirit of the law? I hope not, and do not believe so.

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## barney 59

I recently read about a college football team in trouble over some funky stuff that happened, but in the article they claimed that in that small college town $57,000,000 changed hands every home game. That's over and above game ticket sales and TV. 
Does the farmer sell more lettuce because they provide a stage at the market and people perform, and possibly for no pay? Does the bar sell drinks on free jam night? Street performers are part of the attraction at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. They put out a hat but there is a huge,huge amount of money that changes hands there everyday and the carnival atmosphere is part of what brings people there to spend. In many cases, what from a performers perspective might be a free unpaid gig, money is being generated and I think that writers of music deserve some small share when their songs are performed and money changes hands. Unfortunately for the performer many times none of or very little of that money might show up in their pocket. Just the same,is someone profiting? If so then the writers deserve a slice.
  Is ASCAP/BMI an overblown bureaucratic business that needs to gouge so that there is something left to pay the writers after they cover their own nut? Probably, and maybe there should be more competition in their industry or something to keep them under control but as it stands it is what is in place to insure that artists get paid.

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## Brent Hutto

If I rent a Steinway grand piano for a week it costs $750. The dealer wants his $750 whether I use that time to play Christmas songs while my family opens gifts or to put on a concert for which I charge $15 a ticket. If I use the piano, that's the price it's offered at. I can pay or not.

Same with rights fees. As I've said before, the songs are available if you want to perform them but it will cost you. If you don't like the fact that the owner charges for you to use a song then don't pay. But the song owner doesn't care if you turn a profit or not.

No different than a landlord. Open a restaurant and lose half a million dollars the first year and the landlord still gets paid or you get evicted. Open a restaurant and make half a million dollars the first year and the landlord gets paid exactly the same. He does not care about your profit and loss sheet, he just rents you the building.

ASCAP fees are the same as rent except its easier to steal the song without paying than it is to stiff a landlord and not get tossed out. But nobody holds a gun to your head and says you have to do Dylan or Beatles or Bill Monroe covers. Either pay up or write your own songs, your choice. And it doesn't matter if you make or lose money at the end of the day.

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## Gan Ainm

Most of us (at least on the Mandolin Cafe!) DO have a reasonable "moral compass" and want to see songwriters fairly paid. However when enough people see a system that time and again does not represent fair payment to the "little guy" and acts like a bully, than we say "nuts".  There are many other cases like this where actions are disguised as "fair compensation" but are in fact fair to only a small sector, usually those already "in control", and "just don't use/buy/play it" doesn't cut it.  So the system "evolves", sometimes rationally, often more by "social Darwinism".
As I once said:
"The moral high ground is hard to hold".

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## EdSherry

In an "ideal" world, the money collected from each venue would be apportioned to the songwriters [and publishers] whose songs were actually performed at that venue.  Money collected from a bluegrass jam would go to compensate the writers [and publishers] of bluegrass songs.

In practice, of course, that's totally infeasible.  ASCAP and BMI (and SESAC and others) allocate (some of) the $$ they collect across songwriters [and publishers] according to a formula.  That formula is far from perfect; it clearly and systematically "underweights" certain types of music in favor of other, "more popular" music, based on considerations (such as airplay) that have little to do with the actual performing patterns of live acoustic music.

Because there's at best a very weak "link" between the music we play at live venues and the $$ that "our" songwriters receive, some live performers think the system is "broken" and that ASCAP/BMI are money-grubbing for-profit entities.  I sympathize, but it's NOT a simple or straight-forward task to work out a "better" solution.

In this country at least, songwriters and publishers have a choice of which performing rights organization to join (ASCAP, BMI and SESAC).  Each uses a different "formula" to allocate royalties received across different songwriters/publishers.  Songwriters (and publishers) have been known to decide which performing rights organization to join based on this sort of consideration.  

So the comment above about "Social Darwinism" has some merit:  if all songwriters thought that ASCAP was screwing them, while BMI was treating them fairly, then over time one would expect to see songwriters "vote with their feet" by quitting ASCAP and moving to BMI.  

Indeed, as I recall, BMI was formed -- at least in part -- because some 'upstart' composers of popular music believed that ASCAP's policies were biased against them and in favor of composers of more 'serious' music -- though the stronger explanation was that ASCAP significantly raised the royalty rates that it charged for the use of recorded ASCAP-controlled material on radio broadcasts on the grounds that composers/publishers were not being adequately compensated.  The radio stations didn't want to pay the much-higher royalties that ASCAP was demanding, but wanted something to play that wasn't subject to the ASCAP license, and they signed up composers and publishers of non-ASCAP material (including blues, country, and gospel) into the new "Broadcast Music Inc." entity (hence the name!).  Hence the popularity of older public domain material (especially Stephen Foster songs) and Latin music [whose writers/publishers were not affiliated with ASCAP) during the 1939-41 period.


I agree that this is not something that performers can affect very much; most venues need to (or do) get licenses from both ASCAP and BMI.

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## Gan Ainm

Thanks Ed for that thoughtful comment and background.

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## Beanzy

Shouldn't artists who feel their music is being under weighted from live performance fees be mounting some sort of challenge?. There's real money at stake here. In this day and age they should be doing regular sample surveys of jams sessions and gigs by region and allocating the fees based on those. So if they want the moral high ground they should step up and put in place practices that ensure fairness by using modern methods and not some skewed air-play figures. I'd imagine there would be many folk, trad and bluegrass musicians who were one heck of a lot better compensated if this were the case.

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## William Smith

WOW,man!!!!!,<Comment removed by Moderator>,Maybe we'll all figure it out one day?

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## Mandobart

Well this issue just took out a local musical get together.  Friends of mine own a little all-ages pool/ping-pong/darts place.  Recently another friend started jam nights there on Mondays, encouraging young (under 21) performers and a couple special-needs young people.  It was a very supportive, friendly atmosphere where friends could play together and visit.  I went down to play tonight and there were no other musicians.  I asked "where is everyone?" and the answer was "ever hear of ASCAP?"  Just like others have posted, the lawyers showed up and demanded several thousand $$.  When the owners said they couldn't afford it, ASCAP lawyer asked "how much can you afford?"  They were threatened so coughed over some money to make ASCAP go away, and now there is no music, not even a radio broadcast.  ASCAP nearly convinced them they couldn't have TV on either.  I know its legal, but that doesn't make it right.  Its legal that all the big banks and big insurance companies get bailed out by us taxpayers, too.

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## mandroid

not singing and never even covering the bar tab, so I'm safe..

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