What is "ascap / bmi"?

Groupie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 72

Below is an excerpt from a message our booking agent got from a club we are booked into around Mt. Clemons. The say we need to pay $50 off the door for "ascap / bmi". It sounds familiar but I don't know for sure. I thought I had read it someplace on a message board once. Check it out and anybody that has any input, tell me what you think.

Quote:

They are the people who represent the record labels. THey charge us $5k-$7k per year to have DJ's and cover bands. Personally, I think its a scam but, they make all the bars pay.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: xxxxxx name blanked out
Date: Mar 8, 2008 1:14 PM

What is ascap / bmi ?

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:43 pm

Those are performance rights organizations. They collect money from any venue that has music. This could even include a radio or a jukebox. It is ment to collect money for artist who get a royalty for each time their song is performed in a public place. This can include bars that have music. BMI / ASCAP and SESAC are all performance rights organizations. They also collect fees from radio stations and TV. Next time you go in a bar take a look at the door. A lot of places will have one of these stickers on it.

Most bars will get charged this fee, but it is unusual that they would ask you to collect money to help them pay the bill. As I said, they pay the bill even if they have a jukebox. It is not specific to venues that have live bands.

I guess it is up to you if you want to go along with it, but it does appear they are trying to balance their books with some help from the artists that play there. It's not like it's a lot of money, but I wouldn't want to see this become a trend.

Having said that, I like to pick my battles. If it is a cool venue to play and they treat you right I personally would not make a big deal out of it. Remember you can easily sink 50 bucks worth of free drinks. Wink

Groupie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 72

That's sort of along the lines of what I thought. Hearing it here makes me feel better about paying it. We do play exclusively cover songs. (Tribute! I hate the cover band label)

I had started to think about this more recently when I'd bought some sheet music real recently. Black Sabbath "We Sold Our Soul For Rock and Roll". It had some revisions on some of the song that I wanted to incorporate into my playing. Down at bottom of each song is said "No public performance of these songs is allowed without expressed consent from the artist". I just wonder if we'll have the real "Note Police" show up at a gig one of these times. I should probably get a receipt for paying that fee and use it as a get out of jail free card when they show up.

Thanks for the info!

Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:03 am

Yeah, it kind of feels like that.

They have been doing this for years. They actually do have people that visit bars and make sure they are paying if they have any kind of music in their place. I guess they have been doing this for a long time. One of my relatives used to own a bar way back in the 40's and a couple of guys came in to mussle him into paying. He had a jukebox in there. He thought they were from the mob.

Groupie Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 71

Rick wrote:

He thought they were from the mob.

I can understand the confusion, 'cause it ain't that different, really!...

This is a topic that has come up countless times in some national musican's forums I frequent. Musicians seem to be in two camps on this: Some like the idea of some entity representing them as songwriters and performing artists. Some see these groups as just extorting money from these venues on a very vague and general basis, and keeping the lion's share of it for themselves.

What has always been the good news is that it is not up to the artist to pay this, but up to the VENUE. But, amongst small guys in Mickey Mouse markets like myself, this has always been a big don't-ask-don't-tell... Say that I market myself very hard and finally land a gig at a prestegious place. Do you think I'm going to offer, "Oh, by the way, you DID pay the exhorbitant fee to ASCAP/BMI so that I can perform my cover songs at your place, RIGHT? Wouldn't want to get taken to court, you know!"? Yeah, sure. Like I'm going to say this. Right... Okay, if I'm asked about it, I won't lie, but I'm not going to bring this up on my own. I'm just happy to have a gig, and I don't want to bring up any stuff that messes that up!...

I also have never heard of a venue hitting up the artist directly for these costs in this way. Maybe in an indirect way, like just out-and-out paying less, but not like an "itemization" like this...

The absurdity of it is pretty easy to see. As I say, since venues don't get into the business of listing the EXACT songs played/performed at a place so that the EXACT people responsible for this art get fairly compensated, it's not exactly what you'd call a fair system...

Many tourist venues I play expect performers to go 4 hours. Just how many artists have 4 hours of original material (for solo acoustic performers, that's 50 songs!)? I don't think even a rabid songwriter like Bruce Springsteen had this many B-or-better performable songs by his mid 30's... The big name acts that have been doing this for years seem to perform only 90 minutes these days, and upstart guys are expected to play almost 3 times this on WAY less material. Covers almost seem an inevitability... (Yeah, I know there's "public domain" songs, but if you look at them, they are a pretty stodgy bunch of songs...)

As a cover artist, if I were to get in trouble for this, I've always felt the arguement was good to COUNTER-sue! Say I perform a Smashing Pumpkins song. Some guy hears it and it swirls in his head a couple days. He's knocking around Wal-Mart one day and decides to pick up the CD. It seems to me that I've served a role in promoting the product of the Smashing Pumpkins. I'm advertising for them! Where's MY cut in all this?...

I've heard of quite a few cases where venues have quit having live music for just for this reason. These venue owners are typically not lawyers, and are very easily scared off by even the HINT of a threat of trouble this can bring. So, ironically, this group that claims to be all in favor of the artist, is HARMING the local music scene!

As for which camp I'm in on this, it probably shows pretty easily, but I'll make it more stark for those only skimming the above: From my angle, this is legalized extortion harming my local music scene, collecting money under the guise of helping artists, and these lawyers are preventing me from performing more and preventing more music from reaching more local ears. Pardon the salt in my language, but these people are a bunch of opportunistic fuckin' VAMPIRES!...

Groupie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 72

Do the artists actually get any of this money?

We're having this money taken off the door. We just won’t see it. There is no other guarantee for the night. If the bar does well that will bother me quit a bit. It would seem that the venue could absorb a bit of this cost. The next thing we'll see them do is to have the bands pay the electric bill. Put the stage's electrical circuit onto a separate meter.

Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:34 am

Wow ...I've never even heard of this before now and I have been playing bars since I was 17 years old. Sounds pretty shady & petty to me ...geez

Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 5:21 pm

Keep in mind guys that performance rights organizations will collect royalties from clubs even if they only have a TV going. The logic is if there is music being played (TV, Radio, DJ or what ever) then a good percentage of it will be published and copywrited material. Also note that an artist has to join these organizations and pay a fee for the service. So they are collecting money on both ends.

What if a club has nothing but indie bands and doesn't have a radio or any other music going on in their place? Or if they fill their jukebox with only local music by indie artists? Now wouldn't that be cool. I'm sure the music cops would hit them up anyway as even some of the local bands belong to a performance rights organization.

Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:35 pm

I want to open an Indie club up here one of these days Rick.

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:17 pm

wiki wrote:

I want to open an Indie club up here one of these days Rick.

That would be cool. Get a jukebox and only put bands from Michigan in there. Very Happy

A long time ago I was in a house band at a club. We did almost all cover tunes but we did a record too. The owner put it in the jukebox and it was the number one play for a couple of months. The jukebox vendor was blown away since it got more than double the plays of any of the majors he had in there. He wanted to put it in all of his jukeboxes. This was a big vending company and it would have gone into hundreds of jukeboxes accross the state. We knew that it only got play in this club because we were the house band, but he didn't know that. We respectably declined the deal thinking it would be a big flop. Looking back on it we should have let him do it and see where it took us.

Moral of the story ... always keep your eyes open for an oportunity to market your products. Jukeboxes are every where. Do they have one where you play? If you have a following there talk to the guy that does the vending machines, specifically the jukebox. Tell him that you play this place all the time and draw a crowd. See if he will let you put your stuff in there. He doesn't have a lot to loose by giving it a shot. Oh, and if you get your tunes in there ask people to play it. You'd be surprised to see the vending guy's reaction when the counter is moving. They watch the count like a hawk!

Groupie Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 71

I'd love to see someone take the initiative to make a new live music place in northern Michigan.

It has occured to me that there are a lot of good musicians not getting hired for 9 months out of the year in northern Michigan since these venues believe the only audience that matters is summer tourists. And, I bet most would be surprised how LITTLE these musicians would work for, since the market is definitelty thick with them, and some of this talent is surprisingly good. Rather than have yet another venue that barely has live music and pays decent when they do have it, I think there's a niche for a club that has a live music nearly ALWAYS, but pays on the low side to get that done. Everyone, musicians and public, could appreciate such a place, I'll bet. No one is doing this, and I bet it could work!

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:51 am

Gene I can relate to that. I used to live near West Branch when I was younger. The music sceen was pretty much the same deal. I would have loved to have a venue that had live music some place near by. I actually lived in Skidway Lake and they rolled up the sidewalks at 10 PM. Locals didn't have much to do once summer was over.

Groupie Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 71

Amongst musicians, this idea is controversial, since it involves many of them accepting lower pay. Yeah, of course I think EVERY musician should be hired at EVERY place EVERY night and get paid exhoribitantly well EVERY time, but the demand and economics of this area make that a model that just won't sustain. This ain't Fantasyland...

If you look at the number of good musicans there are, versus the number of venues they have to play at and the total number of venue-night slots there are, it's definitely a venue's market. This results in a big crop of good musicians sitting home and watching TV... A smart venue would take advantage of this!

I realize this also invites the possibility of the quality of the product to go down, but, given what it is, I still say there's a niche, here. It not only can benefit the public, but it could provide that "middle step" option for newer musicians between playing for decent pay and not playing at all.

So it sounds like I propose screwing musicians with this, but trust me, I'm very much in their corner. It can be win/win if done right.

(Can you tell that I once took an economics class in college?... Heh.)