Re: Music lic fees for stores

[Mark Shneyder <bostonradio@yahoo.com>]

Tony wrote :
>
> Excuse my naivete but I have always wondered why restaurants that
broadcast
> radio stations had to pay the fees in the first >place. The stations
already
> paid the ASCAP fees! 

That's precisely what the Restaraunt Association of
America was lobbying against. In addition, they claimed
that it was absolutely absurd to pay for something that came over the
public airwaves for free. It seems that their reasoning made sense to
many politicians.

ASCAP which in the past collected $500 million a year now expects to
have major losses in its revenue and says that it will have lay off
400 staffers.

But looks like BMI and ASCAP will stay in business
for a while : The Congress also passed another bill which extended the
current Copyright laws for 20 more years(it matches the length of the
current European Union deal).

The average royalty payment collected by a songwriter/playwrite from
BMI or ASCAP
is only about $5000 a year. BMI and ACAP
have 75,000 members each. The average licensing fee paid by a business
owner to ASCAP is $1.50/day; to BMI is $1.00. (I am sure your local
barber shop or hair salon had this cost buried somewhere in the price
of your haircust :)

- -Mark
 
> I remember an ASCAP guy came into a clothing store I worked at in
Harvard
> Square and demanded we pay an ASCAP fee because we had WFNX on. We
laughed him
> out of the place. 
> 
> At a gig at the Worcester Artist Group (WAG) loft/live space in the
early 90s,
> the band I was in were warned by the management not to play any
covers under
> any circumstances since WAG was refusing to pay the ASCAP/BIM fees
and didn't
> want to get fined. I said "They aren't going to fine you. How will
they know?"
> But they were adamant about it. I was bummed and told our audience
that we
> wouldn't be able to do our "destroy all covers" encore that we were
semi-
> infamous for! 
> 

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