Does anyone really see any loot from B.M.I.?
rfbutter
49 Posts
I do sound for a jazz band once a week and host a monthly D.J. night at a spot and they've been getting harassed by B.M.I. for rights fees and such. It seems like this has been happening a lot in the area. I'm just wondering if any artists that roam this board actually see royalty checks from these guys, or if they're just extorting local clubs and bars for cash, and pocket the cash? It really pisses me off because the owners of the spot are re-evaluating whether or not it's worth having a band once a week, and my monthly D.J. night if they're going to have to fork over a rediculous sum of money to keep them going, and if these guys aren't really looking out for the artists best interest, just the record execs, then what the fuck is the point? 
Comments
Hold on: they're asking for money in part because you played their artists' 45s in public?[/b] Really? That's really some cut-your-head-off-to-spite-your-face shit. DJs would be out of work across the country if they all had to pay exorbitant performance license fees. Or is this already the case and I'm out of the loop?
$732 million dollars to composers, writers & publishers.
Seems fair to me if you are using a service 'Music' to increase YOUR profits then you should pay the makers of that product / service a fee.
I appreciate the way they and other organisations go about it, can seem not the best, especially in the way of DJ licensing (sampling days - I.e they turn up and record wghat is being played and then scale this up over the country) but the essence of what they do seems fair to me.
Use someone elses hard work, pay them a fair rate for it.
That being said...I do think asking club DJ's to pay a fee to BMI is ridiculous. Its not like they're going to get a playlist and then distribute money to the artists that were played. They're just looking at it as some bulk revenue stream. But I'm sure they're able to convince colleges that have acoustic open mic night to fork over loot for covers of "Wonderwall"...
GTFOOHWTBS.
Playing records in a club is free promotion for the artists.. and I guarantee a good chunk of the music getting played in clubs isn't going to benefit from any BMI payments. BMI only covers certain artists, mostly from major labels.
Not true - anyone can join BMI, ASCAP or SESAC. My mom could join BMI, put out a record, have it played on an internet radio station, and get paid 3 months later. I know plenty of indy artists that make their living off BMI checks.
True, but they're not in the majority. Point being, the pool of BMI artists shouldn't profit the performance of music they didn't write. Blindly taxing venues for playing music is ridiculous.
True, but many artists are covered by ASCAP instead. Seems like these collection methods are rather crude, and certainly don't keep track of which organization covers who.
I remember a small cafe in Willimantic, CT (small town) getting approached by either ASCAP or BMI because this local blind old man used to sit in the afternoons and play covers on his acoustic guitar. The guy wasn't making anyone any money. There certainly weren't any people who chose to grab their coffee from this particular cafe (at that time, probably the only cafe in town) because of this blind dude. He was just a little sound in the background. How ASCAP/BMI reps caught wind of it is beyond me (I always felt that Willimantic was well outside the cultural radar and this guy's "act" was largely unknown of even in Willimantic) but they certainly nipped that little problem in the bud. No more blind dude. Bloodthirsty bastards.
On the flip, I used to work for someone who released a record back in the early 80's that was a pretty big hit in Europe, and she gets quarterly checks that are pretty nice considering the record has been out of print for at least 20 years and has never been released on CD. I can only imagine the kind of checks that say, Elton John or Bruce Springsteen must get.
Anyway, ASCAP and BMI demanded their fees, the owner didn't feel like paying them, so the place went back to being just a bar. The owner had other reasons to stop the shows as well (having holes kicked into the bathroom walls to hide drugs on a regular basis just didn't sit well with this guy ... he's trying to run a respectable gay bar for the love of god).
I just wonder why a place couldn't agree not to book any BMI/ASCAP artists and continue to have shows without their fees.
It's murky stuff, to be sure.
As long as each artist gets his or her due depending on the amount of times their song gets played, that would be fine. I'm under the impression that B.M.I./A.S.C.A.P just uses a formula to determine who gets what, i.e. Dave Matthews is a big artist so I'm guessing a lot of people cover his music, he gets x percent.
What gets me worried is my night would be way more taxing then the jazz night that is under scrutiny right now. Most of the tracks they play are either public domain or originals. Even when the owner told the rep that the band only did original music, the rep flat out said he didn't care.
As far as their collection methods, it kinda reminds me of the mafia, just without the threat of kneecapping.
I get regular checks and I'm glad. Nothing huge, somewhere in between spare change and mortgage money - bill-paying money is what it is. I see it as helping me to offset the thousands of dollars I've sunk into music gear and expenses over the years.
I'm glad to have an organization represent me. If it were left up to me to go shake down cable tv channels and restauraunts, I probably just wouldn't do it. That's not my style. Guitar players shouldn't put themselves in a position to get their fingers broken.
Seems like the shakedown of the tiny mom-n-pop 5 table diner establishments is overkill though. Just leave em alone. If they make less than x $ a month, leave em alone. I don't want dirty money either. Not my style.
Big bars whose main attraction is loud music, I can see how they should pay something. If they don't like it, then they can set out to play ONLY non-BMI and non-ASCAP music. Good luck with that. Might work as a weird-music theme bar in NYC, but good luck with that schitt in the hinterland. Gotta pay to play.
Hopin' to get the band some shows there, actually. They tend to lean towards Providence bands (apart from the headliners), but now that I'm living in Prov, technically we're "local".
Not sure exactly what you are asking, but it is possible to add enough new elements to a p.d. work in order to make it a copyrightable derivative work.
I don't know the answer to this case, but one example would be that tekno group Rednex who re-did "Cotton Eyed Joe". If it's approached as just a straight cover version then they couldn't copyright it. If they added enough new elements they may be able to claim a copyright.
There are really very few modern songs that even touch p.d. material. Anything since the 20s is protected by law. Most of the p.d. stuff is old folk-based traditonals like A Froggy Went A'Courtin'. The last revision of the Copyright Act pretty much extended lengths on everything well into the future. And if corporations continue seeing revenue off of songs, they will probably lobby to have the rights extended again so that the songs won't fall into p.d.
Here's a good book for folks interested in this topic:
The entire book is available as a PDF from here
I handle all the dealings with the publishing companies for my company. We have dj's at each of our stores along with playing music videos. We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to ascap and bmi. Under ascap, DJ's factor in the same amount as live performances, which I would love to see challenged by someone. i guess they took the whole dj as a musician pretty literal...
Sesac has been hounding me and we were more or less out of budget money for this, so i went through our playlists and took out all the sesac titles.
I am in the process of registering myself with a publishing company. I feel like BMI is the best, middle of the road choice. ASCAP is too big for me and they seem very heavy handed and has much larger fees.
but thats a great example of creative liberties taken in their favor, I never knew that one was from a traditional song- probably should have guessed from the way they blast it at yankee stadium but im too busy yellin who let the dogs out
The last revision of the Copyright Act pretty much extended lengths on everything well into the future.
Yeah this is what Im wondering about, Im assuming all commercial music is spoken for by the way they get extended to infinity,
but is there though some loophole which exists FOR the industry not to have to pay outright for a renewal of copyright- but where they have a chance to extend it at any time a tune re-breaks itself? Not that listening to/exposing obscure music lines my pockets or much anybody elses, but hearing the notion of having to sign song specific paperwork to play music to folks paying a cover or not sounds frightening. It's their world and I'm waiting for em to rear their ugly head in mine.
this sounds like a clever marketing ploy than anything else.
THANKS!!!!
Interesting, what's the name of the show? Gotta check it..
I just learned about trademarks. A creative work like Steam Boat Willie (the first Mickey Mouse cartoon) is copyrighted. But the characters Steam Boat Willie and Mickey Mouse can be registered as trademarks. The copyrights have a fixed time limit (soon to be extended), trademarks apply as long as the holder uses the trademark.
So, if you write a song called Nutsack In A Spidey Hole about Dusty Rusty and his Becky Beth, you could trademark the phrase Nutsack In A Spidey Hole and the names Dusty Rusty and Becky Beth, and they would be yours for as long as your corporation uses them.
This shaking down of business is not new, it is periodic. The first time I heard about was in the 80s, when Gap was sued for roalities because they had the local radio station on in their stores. So Ascap/Bmi collected twice, once from the radio station, and then again from Gap.
If you do an original arrangement of a public domain song (and what arrangement is not original?) you can "publish" the arrangement. Few folk acts in the 50s and 60s (or today I imagine) knew this. So you will almost always see the traditional songs published by a company owned by either the label or the artists management or producer.
Back then it was also assumed that old blues singers dead like Robert Johnson, or alive like Sonny Terry, were neither writers or composers. So their songs were often thrown in the public domain.
Anyway, if the club has music, the laws say they gotta pay.
THAT is fucked up.
This is still in practice. Legally, if my stores (ice cream chain)
play commercial radio over the sound system, we are expected to pay
BMI/ASCAP royalties. Just like with Muzak, which we use in some stores,
there is a monthly royalty fee, although that makes a little more sense.