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Canadian Music Industry Drills Dentists
hereisnowhy writes "CBC reports that the tranquil music that wafts through many dental offices to soothe patients and mask the sounds of the drill may soon be silenced. The music industry is putting the bite on dentists -- demanding that they pay for the right to play it. The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada would also like to extend this policy to 'coffee shops, clothing stores, lounges, elevators -- even radio tunes that people hear on the telephone while on hold.' Are any composers and authors actually in favour of this, or just the publishers?"
A couple of years later I ran a bar that had live music and we played CD's. We had to pay ASCAP and BMI nearly $3000 a year to cover CD's and the bands playing cover songs.
If they do something about the sound of the drill, I'm all for it.
There's a bit of an interesting situation here... the publishers are trying to assert themselves into what presently is a very murky space in copyright land.
Using a broadcast radio station as the hold music on a phone system actually requires a copyright license from the station from which the artists/publishers should be seeking their payment. Of course, since it'd take a lot of work to observe all of the places this is going on, it's one of those bits of copyright law that more or less has been nullified by simple non-enforcement, and therefore slipped into that consumer-friendly category known as "fair use".
Case law has more or less said in the past that if a radio station is being pumped through an amplifier system throughout a building, then whomever is doing that needs to pay because they're redistributing the station. However, if they set up a standalone radio in every room and tune them all to the same frequency, they get the same effective sounds throught the building but don't have to pay because they're not redistributing, but just letting the boom boxes do their thing. But again, that often ends up unnoticed and unenforced.
Major sports venues have to pay for copyright licenses... but your local high school football venue likely uses the same music without paying for it.
Seems like this is an RIAA crackdown just waiting to happen...
Since playing radio is still legal, would it be possible to design a 'smart radio' which searches and switches to another station if the music is no longer playing (i.e. with advertisement or DJ talking).
With such radio, dentists (or whoever) can preset a couple of like-taste stations and skip all the ads and talking, it'll be like a non-stop music album.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I know here in the US, if you play music on "non-commercial equipment" (IE A small boombox from Target, etc) or don't charge a fee, you don't have to pay the fees. But the minute you upgrade to pro equipment or make it pay-to-play, you do.
I found this out whilst doing research for opening a bar, a long term life goal I've had for quite some time.
Overall, even with the fee, it's not THAT much money - especially if you put in a jukebox. I know when I finally open up a place, I'll be more then happy to pay the money - at least until I do more research and find out the artists don't get a cent of it, then I'll be screaming hehe
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
So if you have a radio plugged into your music on hold PBX port and the radio station already pays to play music, wouldn't that be "double dipping"? Isn't that illegal in Canada?
Whats funny is that the article states ""The distinction is that the music is not their property," he said. "And if it's being used in a public fashion or any kind of commercial fashion, then [musicians] deserve to be compensated for its use."
Considering the horrible track-record the recording industry has for paying musicians what is owed them, does anyone think that the musicians will see a dime if such monies are collected. What isn't mentioned is that this may make it illegal for DJ's to play at weddings and bar mitzvahs without paying some sort of fee. How many times do you have to pay for music before you can really enjoy it?
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I buy a CD, I'm buying the ability to use that disk, which means reproducing the sound of that music. I don't care what these assclowns say, but if I buy their music, I can play that music, weither I hear it or I and 500 people hear it.
This just shows how much this really isn't about lost profits or dwindling sales, but about control. They want control over the industry, which is going away. But the harder they squeeze, the harder we fall through their fist. Already another industry of alternative music is rising up, and if that kind of legislation goes down, they'll completly lose to the alternative industry who doesn't charge gobs of money for their music.
And since I'm up here, I might as well plug Tales from the afternow ( www.theafternow.com , free download on the site, 24 and 128kbps). If you listen to that, from beginning to end, you'll know how they're going to try to implement the control.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I can tell from experience that while (in the beginning) it's just awesome when someone simply "wants to hear the music" you've created, that appeal tends to wanes.
Basically, wanting people "just to hear" your stuff is inversely correlated with "time and money invested".
Believe me, after spending a solid week in a studio and dropping more than $7,000 on an album, you'd appreciate it if someone paid you the $5 for the CD you just pressed.
Eventually, someone wanting to hear your music translates into them wanting to hear it so badly that they pay for it. In a perfect world. Would-be fans who don't care to buy your stuff don't pay the bills.
Sony ha
For a few years we stuck an old am/fm radio with a headphone jack plug into our phone system. It'd play the radio on the hold music.
Someone reported us / they figured out we'd been doing it and sued the employer. They 'offered' to settle if they were contracted to write up a commercial type thing. That was part of the legal 'settlement'. Complete gang rape RIAA style in the early 90s.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
And let me tell you: You'd better get it right in one take. 'Cause like I say, it's a high-paying gig. If you can't hack it, there's a line of musicians out the door looking to take your seat.
Why does it cost $7,000? That seems like an awful lot of money. You could buy a high end G5 PowerMac for that much and record it with GarageBand in your basement or garage. Then give it away for free to people to experience your art. If someone likes your music enough they will hire you on and you will become their court musician playing tunes at their estate during elaborate dinners for rich guests.
OK, maybe not that last part.. it's a little too Renaissance.
I'd hate to have to pay to play all those CDs I'm trying to sell on the record company's behalf...
I used to have a dentist that would give you a tape player and let you select from a bunch of cassettes (this was pre-CDs). You could turn up the volume as loud as you wanted to drown out the drill.
I wonder if they'd sue for this. Technically, the dentist was letting me borrow his cassette to listen to it. I'd call that fair use.
Seems that a solution would be to let the patients "borrow" the CDs while they have work done.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
I was pretty shocked to say the least, but if you can believe it, even the 'on hold' music qualifies as "public entertainment" in the view of these idiots. Where most businesses used to be able to just tune a radio and plug that into the telephone, that practice has now effectively been outlawed. In fact, he's never played CDs in his office - he's only used the radio (nevermind that the stations have already paid the 'public entertainment' tax), and that appears to be a no-no as well.
The unfortunate solution to this whole mess was to:
stop playing ANY music in the office
replace the 'on hold' radio with a paid-for recording which has royalty-free music in the background
In the end, SOCAN didn't get much money from him, I don't think, because the royalty-free music was composed in-house in the firm that recorded his fancy new telephone greeting for waiting callers. But the whole idea riled him up so much I think they've lost the whole family in customers when it comes to buying music in the future. Go figure.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Are any composers and authors actually in favour of this, or just the publishers?
I asked my wife, a musician, the above question. She replied with "No, that's stupid!" In addition to thinking it was stupid, she also seemed to feel that it was more important the people heard her music than that she was paid for every time it was played.
After asking her about the 'other sides' opinion that the artists need to get paid fairly for their work, she reminded me that even though she is a musician, she won't ever receive the royalties. In her case, she plays with an orchestra. This means that it is not her that is the artist, but the orchestra. And it is not her that can complain, but rather the orchestra director and (possibly) the conductor. But more likely the recording label, not the actual orchestra.
So, OK. The orchestra gets paid. That means that she gets more money because the royalties trickle down in her paychecks. Wrong. She is paid a fixed salary, independent of how much revenue the orchestra makes.
OK, so she isn't exactly a rock star, nor does she make millions with her music, but she is still a recording artist and the law does not benefit her, nor will it ever.
The problem a lot of these establishments have right now is that they feel that they have to play current, hit music. If anything, some music only appeals to certain demographics. I don't want to hear Eminem while having my teeth cleaned or furniture shopping. Play classical music pieces like Mozart or other things that are in the public domain. Last I checked, some of this music is $2.00 a CD in the store!
... so will everyone else .... the gov't .... that's right taxpayers.
The other problem is that the RIAA hasn't tried to sue the US gov't. I would love to see them try and sue the Pentagon, DOJ or the Whitehouse for playing tunes to guests or workers. Big political no,no that you'll never see. But then again, when everyone else pays
This is old, but it still applies... In fact, perhaps now, more than ever.
The End of the Internet
http://mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=494
(Some time in the near future)
I finally found a way to make money off the Internet. I did it by writing a book about how the Net died.
Not that I made any money while it existed, you see. No one did.
Oh, like everyone else, I loved the Internet for all the freedom it gave me, and the wealth of information and idea exchange, where everyone profited from that free flow of thought and information. But, you know how Man is. Never underestimate his ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
Why did it end? Simple: It was greed.
First it started with the Spammers. There got to be so much Spam, that even Congressmen were snowed under with the daily deluge. No one could get their legitimate mail because of the thousands of fake letters these inventive Spammers were sending out with their Web bots. Congress finally made a law strong enough that any of them could be shot on sight. Some hacker then posted on the Web a public list of the lot of them, and soon they were all dead.
The public, long laboring under all that Spam, liked what they did so much, that they killed off all the hackers too. This had a profound effect on people taking computer science and engineering classes, did you know that?
That was the first nail in the coffin of the Net. We should have all paid attention to it. But no one did. We were all too busy trying to make a buck off of the Net.
The next coffin nail came when the Music and Movie companies finally paid Congress enough money to have the copyright laws changed. It was easy once Disney got them to extend copyright privileges another hundred years. The new law that Congress passed was very comprehensive! In fact, no one could listen to the music without breaking the new laws!
Now it was a Federal offense to even read or see anything that was copyrighted. If you did, there would be an unauthorized copy in your brain that you could access just by remembering. Oh, you could legitimately purchase a copy of anything copyrighted in the stores, but you could never open that copy and view it or listen to it. Tough law!
That's why all the libraries in the country were permanently closed. Right after that the schools and colleges were all shut down, and their teachers and administrators put away for using copyrighted materials in their classrooms. Students, however, were forgiven their offense in this, but all their books and notes were confiscated and burned.
The next nail came with the legal view of computer hardware. That legal POV stated that the desktop, palmtop, or laptop computer you were using could also hold, however briefly, yet another copy of any copyrighted material you might put into it, for transfer to a CD, or perhaps downloaded off the Web. Congress just attached this to their Anti-Terrorism Bill for Secure Systems Standards. Remember, these devices were considered guilty until proven innocent, just as their owners were. It seems the very existence of these machines was now suspect, because someone, somewhere, might use them for pirating copyrighted material!
Therefore all these computing devices became illegal to even own. No more Computers!
The music companies, having now gotten their way with Congress, finally had a law written that was so powerful, even they were locked up! They were all sent to prison for having a copy of their own music, which they had bought (or rather stolen) from the artists. Just deserts!
Then the movie producers and the owners of movie theaters were locked up for the same violation of this powerful new copyright law! They were sent away for distributing more than one copy of their movies.
Then the music artists and singers were all locked away for the same reason. Worse, for under the new law, many were sent up the river for playing their own songs too many time
The reason dentists give patients music to listen to is so that the patients are more relaxed, which contributes to a better overall image of the practice, as well as reducing the number and duration of time wasting events such as panic attacks. In short, by using the music, the practice is more successful.
The same argument applies to malls. The proprietors play music that enhances the mood of the listener in a way that benefits the mall's tenants (sales), which means a steadier tenant roster (successful tenants) and continuing lease payments. Music is not a small part of the strategy that goes into making a mall a pleasurable place to shop.
If copyrighted material is used by a business to improve its success, then royalties are in order, just as if it was used in an advertisement on TV.
Actually, the Radio stations already pay a royalty to the artists when they play songs. The easy way around it for them is just to stick on the radio. Speaking of on-hold music, I did once get a cheque for A$200 for on hold royalties and it came at a time when I was so broke, I couldn't even afford to feed my cat let alone myself. It got me and my cat through the week. For struggling, up and coming musicians, the airplay royalty is a good thing.
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This is allready practiced in Norway. Taxis, coffee bars, shops, the lot. Everyone has to pay royalties to TONO. It sucks ass. They even has to pay for listening to the radio, even though the radios allready pay for playing music. And btw, I'm an artist. Not anything big at all, but still.
...Remembering music in your memories and listnening to it? If music industry only could force you to forget, or to detect that you are at the moment "listening" inside... they would squeze money out of you.
...) from producers, with agreement that producers won't cut their buyers' (brokers') prices by selling bellow them, or even that they would not make another sell at all, for some fixed, agreed upon, period. That clause is, of course, voluntary and seller's fail to comply, treachery, would hurt seller's bussiness credibility and future prices hard (I am sure that, in case of traceability of trust breach, there could even be a court case).
I suggest people who are sick and tired of this make organised "silent listening" parties in protest of stupid note counting: Get together, mention the title, no, title could be a trademark, run a chain of asociations to the part, untill everybody say "I got it" (don't bring clueless friends with you), then someone makes the "start" gesture (whatever it may be) and everybody "listen to the music together" (some very sync people could even dance to it) in ridicule of conduct of music industry and demonstration of the fact that hearing music once is owning it forever.
Where this heads, soon you would be required to use headphones (with real head detection) to stop accidental leaking of their music to someone who did not pay. Loudspeakers would be illegal, unless all precautions are met to keep all the sound inside the room, and everyone in the room payed the playprice. (Not so bad after all... then none would bug you with loud music any more or they would be sued by RIAA for unauthorised handing out of their property).
The point is that information can only be sold the way secrets are sold (remember, by definition something is information for you only if you haven't already knew it). That goes for all new (software, video) and old (written stuff, music, even patents) flavours of information. Any other attempt to price and deal it in material kind of way is like trying to hold the water in the basket, plow the sea, or heard the snails.
Information is precious and should be priced very high accordingly, but any attempt to steer it afterwards is pointless, doomed, expensive, troublesome and, as most of us feel, tiranic. Get your money now and keep your nose out of my business! The problem they (information producers and dealers) have with this natural state of affairs is twofold: 1) they wish to sell directly to great number of people who hasn't got that kind of money, but as there are so many of us, 'en masse' ('the market') we have huge amount of it (and they think they shold get all of it and more) and 2) they are huge machinery wich pays its own record manufacturing. The solution is so obvious and natural but, hidden behind the long rooted law system, information industry doesn't want to change and subsidize itself:
First, the information carrier imprinting (record production) industry should be separated from information producing industry.
Second, there should be information exchange market, like there is stock exchange market. The information brokers would buy brand new (and expensive!) information (music, software, films,
Of course, the buyers will have to be very cautios who they get into business with. Maybe some of their co-buyers can make fast sell into their target market and close them out (think "first newspaper to publish the news"). But, going large scale may be too expensive. New owners of information can choose to sell several copies to other interested parties, at more affordable (medium or small businesses affordable) price covering their expenses plus profit in sum.
At some pont, record producing industry will buy the information and publish it at very affordable price (i.e. like Linux or BSD distros of today), but of course they will compete and try to get it sooner then competition do. Still, somewhere, very soon, you will be able to get it for smaller price, home
Tell SOCAN to snarf off. An Expressvu commercial account will run $593.64/year for minimal (46.97/mo includes all fees, but not taxes.) programming that includes the Galaxy stations. (variety of music) (you have to take some TV programming now according to the CRTC, which seems kind of silly) Cost of equipment is minimal, installation isn't that expensive (no freebie specials for commercial establishments unfortunately) and.. it is a tax writeoff. Hmmm, I wonder how they would proceed in court over someone just having the radio going? It is free off the air, just like someone having a bar and putting a TV in with a plain old antenna doesn't have to pay.
Perhaps a good solution would be for patients to bring their own music to play. No extra licensing fees and no having to suffer the taste of the dentist.
As a dentist and a human being, this really pisses me off. This is a perfect example of overextended greed and misplaced blame. Don't they understand that they're harassing some of the very people who actually PAY for their music? The only solution to this sort of nonsense is for someone to allow themselves to get taken to court. If you could then manage to generate enough negative publicity they would be forced to drop the whole thing. I'd love to see a website with pictures of SOCAN execs, publicly humilitating them personally for being greedy bastards.
j sp
There was a similar flap about 10 or 15 years ago where BMI was shaking down bar and club owners that had live bands covering copyrighted music. I could almost understand it since they were making money by offering the music as entertainment but threatening to sue dentists is ridiculous.
TELL THEM HOW YOU FEEL:
http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/contact_us/email_us.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
About 1 1/2 years ago, a company (not sure which one) was sending people to different (small) business's in Minneapolis Minnesota. Most of the businesses were non chain coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants. They basically said that they would be fined if they were playing music if they did not have a subscription to digital radio. Just about every place I used to go to had to switch, because no one wanted to get fined., or fight to defend their rights to play music in their location. Some people did try doing different things, like playing music off music channels on cable, but for the most part, no more local bands, no more local music, nothing but mainstream music off digital subscription. It will happen in your city soon if it hasn't happened yet, it worked so well in Minneapolis, im sure they will force everyone onto it.
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