ASCAP fucked up; not the music industry.

ASCAP and BMI collect royalties for composers and music publishers (who publish the lyrics and music), not the record labels. The recorded music is a separate held copyright, and is usually owned by a record company or label, for which ASCAP and BMI do not collect copyright payments. This you already know, but I wanted to make a point of it because most of the logjam regarding any song is the recording of it.

ASCAP and BMI collect royalties on performances, including covers by other artists. They have tried to collect songwriter royalties for "preview" stubs on Amazon and iTunes, but that's a non-starter, and is only very recent. There are a lot of Websites that are ASCAP/BMI-compliant, and pay a royalty. The YouTube deal was a fairly narrow use case. In the view of ASCAP, YouTube is like a syndicator, and when a syndicator broadcasts music they pay for each commercial user (pipe Musak to 10 malls: fee X 10). If they demand money from people for embedding YouTube vids with music, they are in fact extending their radio play and syndication business model to the Web. Would they be expected to make an exception for Web-based businesses?

I have collected money from ASCAP for almost 20 years.

ASCAP also pays "producers"; which will be the record company.

If you ever make a hit song and join ASCAP then join as a song writer
and then also join as a producer for the same music.


What you just posted is the flawed reasoning why so many music people
join ASCAP and then only get half the money they are owed.


Thank you.


NEXT!!!!!!!

There are huge differences between radio stations and websites. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to open up a radio station, while it costs next to nothing to put a website online. 99.9% of the websites out there will never make a dime, no less will they pay anyone any money to play a song or a video. They get caught, they just shut down, because they have nothing invested.

If a website does not "make a dime" then how much traffic did that web site
have?

And if the website had no traffic then how much fees do they really owe
for music?

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
But you still get all the somethings(Napster) paying for it.

Sites that are getting traffic need to pay and those are the sites that
want to pay since they are getting traffic from the music.


Real webmasters pay more for content then any ASCAP fee would have
been for their website.

Switch "music content" with "porn content" in your mind for a moment
and think : Do content providers worry about web sites with no traffic
stealing content, or do they worry about high traffic tubes stealing content?

not really a difference. radio waves are 'open' just as much as the internet is - you just need the tools. but ASCAP/BMI don't go after every little pirate radio shit who broadcasts music from their garage. same as they can't go after every little website. like you said they'd shut down or the money wouldn't be worth it. but they could have done something about the BIG ones.

ASCAP JUST started getting into the internet in general. their website was outdated and clunky as fuck for years. the same type of old farts that were behind the record companies were behind PRO's. that's what happened.

You've collected as what?

ASCAP will pay a "producer" if the producer is also the music publisher, or the composer, or the song writer. That happens a lot, but doesn't negate the fact that they don't serve the record industry.

ASCAP and BMI have made deals with Web sites for years, but the big ones where the effort was worth a dime. It's always been a volume business. I'm not defending them, but not having an easy mechanism to collect fees for every piss-ant Web site that wants to license music hasn't caused the problem with the music industry and the Internet, especially since the ASCAP/BMI license fee is a fraction of the cost to license the recording itself. You can cover a McCartney-Lennon tune and pay the fee, but try to put a Beatle's song on your Web site.

I collected from all categories of ASCAP.

Feel free to not listen and lose money.

I got the checks, you got the talk.

ASCAP has a record label category? That's your insinuation. You can't put a recording on your Web site because the master recording belongs to the record company, and they are the ones who sell licenses to it. ASCAP has nothing to do with that, nor do they have anything to do with the mechanical license you still need to put a file on your site (talk to HFA; they'll sell you rights for 10 cents a song per copy).

Since ASCAP is member owned, bring your beef up with the membership committee.

no, if the clinton era had been on their game we wouldn't have this issue. they wrote the dmca.

Most websites aren't for profit.

They didn't need to go after every pirate broadcasting from their garage. That's what the FCC is for. If they are an illegal pirate station, then the FCC shuts them down.

Something else to think about... I just read an article in Rolling Stone Magazine by the manager of U2 talking about music piracy and it got me to thinking.... How much of the music we buy is really a repurchase of repackaged music in a different form?

My first album was REO Speedwagon's "Hi Infidelity". This was an LP I bought. Then I bought on cassette so I can listen to it in my car, and then later on I bought on CD. I bet you I've also purchased some songs from that album from Itunes or Rhapsody. Basically I bought the same music over and over again, on an album, then a cassette, then a CD, and then in digital format. (I still have the CD and I could go rip it, but it's just so much easier to click on "buy" and have it instantly instead of waiting two minutes to load it up from the closet in the guest room.)

My point is now that mp3 is the standard, we'll never have a "new format". We'll never need to buy that music again because we'll always have it in digital format - forever and ever. The music company just lost out on a lot of sales being as we'll never have to repurchase the same music over in a new format.

Not sure about this one. MP3 is a highly lossy format, comparable to MPG1 video in the amount of detail that's lost. And you never get it back. Record companies love that, because it's maybe 1/10th a modern digital recording, which are now being mastered similar to 7.1 channel movie soundtracks.

MP3s and iPods have returned us to the days of AM transistor radios. The music is there, and it's all some people want or need, but MP3 just isn't good enough to be all that we'll ever need. I predict you'll be buying your music again real soon!

mp3 has a lot cut out and bandwidth and storage is always going to get cheaper. Something bigger with more detail in will replace it.