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Music Industry Shaking Down Coffee Shops
realjd writes with news out of Florida that music licensing companies are now hitting small bars and coffee shops that offer live music, even if only occasionally and even if the musicians don't get paid. One coffee-shop owner told musicians they can only perform their own songs from now on. "A restaurant owner who doesn't even offer live music was approached for payment for having the TV on while the Monday Night Football theme played. And if the owners pay up to one licensing company, all of the others start harassing them, calling four times a day, demanding payment too. It sounds like they don't even check whether any copyright violations occurred, they're just sending bills to any business that may or may not have live music."
Before you guys get all worked up, remember that it's NOT the RIAA behind this. It's the LICENSING companies.
My coffee shop was shaken down by ASCAP a couple years back, and they were very clear about the fact that even if it was original music, they still wanted to be paid. In fact, when I pointed out we did not have a stage and did not have live music, They said in no uncertain terms that since we could not absolutely prove to them that no music was ever performed there, we had to pay anyway or face litigation, prosecution (yea, right), and an injunction shutting us down. That and what they wanted was not just a grand or two, I don't remember, but it was excessive. We told them to piss off and gave them our attorneys number, and we never heard from them again. Other shops in the area did pay out, though, and one CLOSED because of the legal harassment. What a racket.
The purple onion is still there, they just moved a block over to a new location.
IANAL. This fits the definition of fraud, i.e. attempting to obtain money by deception, I would contact the police, give them any evidence and let them deal with it, if the police don't do anything because of their ties to the industry then that's corruption and you should contact Internal Affairs or whatever they go by these days, if they do nothing then it's probably upto the Feds. If no joy on any of these I suggest that someone set up a website to collect donations for a private criminal prosecution. I am not a lawyer but a close family member is a member of the judicary in the UK and as US law was based on UK law the standards should be similar.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
A cover is not a derivative work, it is a performance of the song, which is the melody and lyrics. A cover is usually using the melody and lyrics in their entirety, even if the arrangement is change (and arrangements do not have copyrights). Weird Al is protected because it is a derivative parody and satirization, which is specifically protected under copyright law. Further, I would bet that he/his label licenses the music anyway just to be safe.
I mean, Weird Al does derivative performances that copy nearly exactly the music of some artists (he usually alters only the lyrics) and every time he does a M. Jackson song he gets sued by MJ, and he always wins. What's the difference here?
He still has to pay royalties to the song writer. Note, by this I mean the person who wrote the music, not the original lyrics.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The way I understand it, there's a concept of compulsory licensing in the music industry. If you want to perform a cover of another artist's song, the other artist can't stop you from doing that (imagine you're Slayer and you want to cover a song written by Oral Roberts). But you do have to pay the original artist; I believe the agreed-upon fee is a set percentage of the profits of your recording.
... if you worked at your college radio station, you might recall that radio DJs are required to keep meticulous records of all the songs they play. The flat-fee approach for bars and restaurants allows them to avoid this recordkeeping.
For venues that allow live music, which might "give public performances" (i.e. play out loud) any number of songs, the way they work it is that ASCAP/BMI offers a program where the venue can play a flat fee that allows them to play unlimited songs.
For radio stations it's a little different
Most bars actually don't complain about this, because for them the fee really is actually fairly reasonable. People come to bars to get drunk, order more beers and shots than they originally planned, plug quarters into the juke box and the pool table, and the bar owner is happy. Few people buy more than two lattes at a coffee shop, on the other hand.
It sounds to me like the coffee shop owners aren't getting "shaken down" any more than any other business (like a bar or restaurant) is. What they seem to be saying is that, unlike bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, they can't afford it.
Breakfast served all day!
My advice to anyone who this happens to or anybody that you know that this happens to is to immediately defer this to a lawyer. 999 times out of 1000 you will never hear about it again because their claims are fraudulent. Most lawyers should only charge a few bucks (or at least only a fraction of what is being asked as payment) to take a phone call or write a letter to squash this kind of claim like a bug. Lawyers love to qwn these kinds of idiots. I know this because my dad is a lawyer, and he hates these kinds of fraudsters.
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
It was. First it was simply a license that you are playing author's music which are represented by agency. Then, lot of cafes and shops started to play non-represented, unknown authors, invited local groups to play, etc. Seeing this, again, agencies got laws changed and now they represent virtually EVERYONE, even you. They don't care that you don't have a contract, who cares, when you will do, then you can collect your money.
And now they claim that ANY sounds, even public domain ones, are subject of payment. So, pay up.
Yes, we have seen this before. Yes, patent trolls. But these are much stronger and legal ones. If you say "this sucks", you have serious explanation to do, because it is "holy copyright". Most people simply see it as not worth the hassle and gives in.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Actually, your characterization of fascism fits in pretty closely to the original:
"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, as it is a merge of state and corporate power."
--Giovanni Gentile, the 'Philosopher of Fascism' under Benito Mussolini
Performance rights organizations been doing this for years. At least, ASCAP has been.
They've shut down mom-and-pop bars that rent juke boxes from vendors but didn't pay a the fee to have music in their public place. You'd think that buying the CD would be enough to cover the royalty, but no. You'd think that because almost all the money goes to vendor who owns the machine that it would be the vendor's problem, but no. Go over to ASCAP site and read through the press release archive ... every year they sue the business out of a dozen or so places that they decide to make examples of. It's only a tiny, tiny fraction of the business not paying the license, but if you put one business out of business, every remaining business in that market will pony up if it can.
But every year the fees go up and up and up. And now it's way way way more expensive to pay the fee than to risk it.
I ran a newspaper that wrote a story (reported by Michael Carmody) about this last year. Here's a solid quote from the story that supports what I'm saying:
1) how does this affect so-called "tribute bands?" I once walked around my local arts district, and there was a Beatles cover band absolutely ripping Taxman. Although they were indoors, the windows were open and the copyright violation was plain for all to hear. It appeared that everybody walking by loved it! Are all these bands "out of business" now?
2) Professional photographers are usually required to have a license to play recorded music in the studio. The only exception is that small studios (under 2000 square feet) are allowed to play the radio (but a license is required for CD/tape/record playing). Even those over that size limit must have at least four speakers in one room, and six or more speakers total, to need a license. Yes, the license fees take the number of speakers into account...
I don't know. Ask the Mexicans.
Two points:
1. Many of the people you refer to as Mexicans are actually from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, etc. Washington policy has always wanted latino labor to be a cheap, exploitable commodity. US corporations have always seen Latin America as their rightful property, toxic dump and political/military playground. The influx of latin immigrants (whether they come from Central or South America, northern Mexico is the portal to the USA) is just another example of selfish and shortsighted Washington policy coming back home to roost.
2. It's a two way street. Do you have any idea just how many gringos live in Mexico? Quite a lot. In fact, many more than you might imagine. Just check out most of Baja, San Miguel De Allende, Cuernavaca, Merida, etc. And it's not just Mexico, of course, gringos are everywhere.
From the OP: What is it there in the USA that people, even some Britons (I live in Britain today) want to live there??
While it's true that some people from all over the world may want to live in the USA, let's not ignore the fact that a large number of USA citizens have had it up to here and bailed ship already.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I used to be in the DJ biz in the 80's and I know several still in it today. Absolutely NONE pay BMI or ASCAP fees of any kind. Most have resorted to simply changing their business name yearly to hide.
From what I have seen I would bat that nationwide that 90% of party, bar and school DJ services are not paying the fees.
just work under a LLC and rent all your gear. If they catch you they wont get crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise"
Itself a blatant ripoff of Stevie Wonder's "Pasttime Paradise", from "Songs In The Key Of Life". If anybody, Weird Al should have gotten permission from Stevie. Is Coolio so deluded as to think that this work actually belongs to him? Talk about pretzel logic! Oh well, nothing makes sense anymore.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I don't even know where to begin.
The radio play (etc.) was traded for the extended copyright several years ago.
The license is for live music, and the royalties (less about 10% admin) go directly to composers, and the formula, though complicated to a layperson, is pretty clear.
The license for broadcast music is different, and because of the massive number of broadcast stations, is pro-rated by random surveys.
The copyright for arrangements lies with the original owner, but arrangements of public-domain materials can be (depending on the extent of new material) be copyrightable and licensable.
The Girl Scout thing was just stupid -- even though the law was on their side, we ASCAP members (it's a membership organization where each composer votes on the board) raised a ruckus.
What's the fee? It depends. We have a performance organization and our royalty bill for 2006 was $29 because we listed what we played. Want a cheaper bill? Have the cover bands keep a performance log, and pay exactly the amount of the bill.
Nothing is hidden. ASCAP operates under a decades-old court order allowing it to represent its member artists, and has to go back to the court for every change. Otherwise, we'd each negotiate individually, and the last thing a presenter needs is to be descended on by the lawyers for thousands of composers.
I know this is Slashdot, but this multi-age mangle is just bizarre.
Dennis
We Are All Mozart
You forgot to mention the most insidious example, the Rolling Stones. This band made their career by blatantly ripping off artists such as Robert Johnson, then dispatched a fleet of lawyers when a string arrangement from one of their songs was sampled by The Verve, for the song "Bittersweet Symphony".
I do agree that the Bittersweet Symphony situation was a sad example of bitter jealosy and greed by the stones. I remember hearing an interview with Richards where he said "what? are we supposed to be flattered?" I'm yelling at the TV, "Yah, you idiot! You SHOULD be because the song is brilliant!"
HOWEVER, this was not a case of music composition royalties, which The Verve actually paid for the track. The problem was that the orchestral riff was also a sample from a record that the stones' previous manager (to whom the stones gave way too many rights away early in their career) had produced. When he saw how successful the record was, he said that he didn't agree to the sampling so he demanded 100% of the royalties. Neither band makes royalties when Bittersweet Symphony is played, not even on the Nike commercials. The former manager does.
"I forgot my mantra."
Great question!
t ml
The short version is that because ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC (known as PROs, or Performance Rights Organizations) are all private companies that are, at their core, really just bunches of copyright holders collecting together, they measure usage and divide up money however they want. They all do it differently, based on different data. ASCAP, for example, owns (or at least invested heavily in) MediaGuide, a company that has computers listening to every radio station in most major markets in the country and using audio fingerprinting to make playlists of everything that's on. Some PROs require radio and TV stations to make lists of everything they play for a certain part of every year. I think some of them use SoundScan record sales data. And people putting on concerts sometimes have to (or at least are allowed to) submit lists of the songs played. They extrapolate from all that data to get a picture of everything that's getting played everywhere. The estimation doesn't have to be perfect -- it just has to be good enough to satisfy a majority of the votes among the copyright holders who run the PRO. In practice, there are pretty complicated formulas, and I think it generally works on a "points" system. (You get more points for having your song played on NBC than on your local college radio station, etc.)
As for payments, it's all blanket licenses -- Chevy's, for example, pays a flat fee annually that's negotiated based on the ways Chevy's uses music. For example, an establishment with live music every night is likely to pay more than an establishment that plays the radio. (Ever wonder why some chain restaurants have stupid non-Happy Birthday birthday songs? It's to lower their ASCAP fee.)
Want to know more? Dig around this info about the ASCAP payment system: http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/paymentintro.h
Virtually all countries have performance rights organisations, and have had them for at least a century and a half. What ASCAP is doing now, has pretty much been done in all western countries in the history of recorded music. If you are in France, you are going to have to pay SACEM, If you are in the U.K. you have to pay PRS, and if you are in Canada you will have to pay SOCAN. In all the example countries I have given, tarrifs/royalties are higher and more strictly enforced than in the U.S... ASCAP are actually one of the easier PROs to deal with.
Get a fucking clue before you open your mouth about these things. The U.S. is actually far far better than most countries when it comes to PROs.
The FCC requires a log to be maintained and presented on request that contains the times the station call letters were announced, the type or programs aired (drams, music, whatever) and times, name(s) of the programing including song names and such and records of non-prerecorded programs to verify the accuracy of a complaint. It requires a lot of other things too like antenna and transmitter settings, announcer names and so on. You have to produce upon request, either a recording or transcript of the program and everything else. Lacking any will let your station lose against almost any complaint plus place you in violation of the rules.
Anyone around radio or TV broadcast should knows this. I'm questioning your claim at this moment. Or at least your ability to know enough to make that statement. Of course it is all in the current copy of "The Public and Broadcasting" which is also require to be in every broadcast (radio) station and it requires the most current version available too. They don't do it to collect royalties. They require it to verify complaints the station might have against it. And est be straight, when you say record, I am assuming you mean writing the play list down not actually (tape) recording the recording of the song. So, in this case, yes, you have a copy for the FCC and it should be trivial to copy it for any royalty collections.