RE: Music lic fees for stores

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Sun, 3 Jan 1999 11:21:37 -0500, Gary F <gff@mediaone.net> said:

Please wrap your lines!

> ASCAP, BMI and the other music licensing firms are NOT sharing the
> fees they collect with the artists - they only work for the
> composers (who traditionally get the short end of everything).

Who still do according to the musicians I know....  Remember that
ASCAP and BMI pay royalties based on the following procedure:

1) Infrequently, take an incomplete survey of what stations are
actually playing.

2) Plug this into a computer model which imagines what might actually
have been played.

3) Write checks in proportion to the level of imaginary airplay.

This method underweights smaller, local or regional artists while
overemphasizing big names with national exposure.  (Before somebody
starts: obviously, if you get more airplay, you ought to get paid for
it.  The problem with this system is not that widely-known artists
get paid more, it's that the licensing bureau's estimates of airplay
credit those artists with more time than they deserve.)

I have a colleague who was part of an obscure band about five or six
years ago (so obscure that I can't remember the name of it), and he
tells me that they still get a reasonable amount of airplay on college
stations, but in all this time his checks from BMI have amounted to
``peanuts''.

- -GAWollman

- --
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
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