nessus@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (Doug Alan) (07/07/89)
I dug into the matter of royalties paid by the college radio station I
worked at and found out that I was indeed partially mistaken. I was
correct in that the station does *not* pay a per song royalty.
Instead it pays an annual licensing fee to ASCAP and to BMI. The
annual fee to ASCAP is $150 and the annual fee to BMI is about $250.
These annual fee allows the station to play as much music licensed by
ASCAP and BMI (which covers the vast majority of music on US or
British record companies) as they want. I have no idea how ASCAP or
BMI then decides whish artists get what share of the money. The
reason I wasn't aware of these fees is because they are so nominal and
because they are not on a per song basis. However, my original point
still stands. For an extremely nominal royalty -- less than half a
cent per song if you average the cost over all the songs played in a
year -- a non-commercial radio station can play a song, or even an
entire album, and potentially millions of people could legally record
the album for free. Not only is this legal -- but it is the way it
should be!
The same thing is true for a commercial station, except that the
royalties they have to pay are much higher -- several cents per song.
Some software companies are making a big scene about public libaries
having software. They say that this makes the software too easy to
copy without paying for it. They want to change the copyright laws to
not allow copyrighted software to be caried in public libraries. This
is an outrage! Why do software companies think that they are above
the laws protecting the common good that musicians and authors have
had to live with for ages?
|>ougnessus@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (Doug Alan) (07/07/89)
In article <8907062011.AA13134@GAFFA.MIT.EDU> Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> writes: >I dug into the matter of royalties paid by the college radio station I >worked at and found out that I was indeed partially mistaken. I was >correct in that the station does *not* pay a per song royalty. >Instead it pays an annual licensing fee to ASCAP and to BMI. The >annual fee to ASCAP is $150 and the annual fee to BMI is about $250. >These annual fee allows the station to play as much music licensed by >ASCAP and BMI (which covers the vast majority of music on US or >British record companies) as they want. I have no idea how ASCAP or >BMI then decides whish artists get what share of the money. This is actually a major source of irritation for many alternative radio stations. ASCAP and BMI do playlist surveys, to see what songs are being played how much. They base the artist payments on the results of these surveys. And they generally only survey large mainstream radio stations, completely ignoring college stations and other alternative stations. So, all those artists that only get played by alternative stations (including Kate) generally don't get any royalties for radio play. Disclaimer: I'm no expert, and I don't have a station manager handy at the moment. I just remember a lot of arguments on the subject about a year or so ago. -Dan Riley (riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu, cornell!batcomputer!riley) -Wilson Lab, Cornell U.
watson@halley.mp3 (William Watson) (07/07/89)
Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> writes: >The station pays an annual licensing fee to ASCAP and to BMI. The >annual fee to ASCAP is $150 and the annual fee to BMI is about $250. >These annual fee allows the station to play as much music licensed by >ASCAP and BMI (which covers the vast majority of music on US or >British record companies) as they want. I have no idea how ASCAP or >BMI then decides whish artists get what share of the money. I am told that ASCAP and BMI distribute the money after determining in some way what is played. Since they have no real data to base this on, I suspect that they just divvy the money up based on record sales. I apologize for not being clear about how this works in my earlier posts. Your point is certainly well taken that payment of a nominal fee allows radio stations to play music which may be recorded by individuals for their own private enjoyment. However, this is not exactly the same as a library lending books. It seems rather unlikely that people will make copies of the books when they check them out of the library. They *do* make copies of records that they check out, and quite probably make copies of software. Although I understand the discomfort that the software houses feel, I cannot see a clear way out of the dilemma. Since it may happen that books are transcribed onto some digital format, and thus easily copiable, the same situation will apply to publishers of novels. I am not sure that this discussion really belongs in this newsgroup, but I will continue for a while yet. The software publishers *do* seem to have a basis for their arguments. The advent of the VCR and prerecorded movies seems to have established a precedent. Movies can be rented. The rental fee paid is for personal use, and does not convey rights to public performance (you can't rent theater rights for $2.00) or copying rights. The motion picture industry is trying quite hard to make taping of programs from the airwaves or cable illegal. If they succeed, why shouldn't the music industry follow? The software companies may have a better case, in that they (normally, at least) do not license their properties for broadcast to the public. This makes such works more similar to printed forms, except for the fact that they can (often) be easily copied. I don't see any clear solutions to this problem, and I am beginning (!) to ramble. Perhaps I will have inspiried someone who can think out such matters more clearly than I. William
henrik@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Larry DeLuca @ The Bandykin Server) (07/08/89)
Well, I can fill in the gap about how roytalties are determined. ASCAP tapes unidentified stations nationwide and uses the sampling to determine what's getting the airplay. BMI uses station logs sent into it each week. SESAC (the third performance-rights agency) is much smaller and uses a more limited form of spot-checking of logs, local stations, and trade charts. larry... PS: This info comes from a book called _Making it in the New Music Business_, by James Riordan, Copyright 1988 by James Riordan, published by Writer's Digest Books. The information has been paraphrased to avoid Copyright infringement ;-).