Currently there *are* bodies that do something like this -- ASCAP and BMI come to mind. Their basic premise is that rather than have every individual musician license their work to each individual radio station/club/retail store, these consumers pay a flat licensing fee, which is distributed to the artists represented by the individual bodies. Each artist gets a chunk based on the amount their work gets played, via an auditing process run by the body.
Are their problems with this? You bet. As an ASCAP memeber, I have yet to see a single check for my performed works. There are a lot of political (as in business politics) issues in play, which end up giving the lion's share of the collected fees to the top 1% of artists.
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It's also on IFilm... I need to get plugger working for real, tho... :P
Currently there *are* bodies that do something like this -- ASCAP and BMI come to mind. Their basic premise is that rather than have every individual musician license their work to each individual radio station/club/retail store, these consumers pay a flat licensing fee, which is distributed to the artists represented by the individual bodies. Each artist gets a chunk based on the amount their work gets played, via an auditing process run by the body.
Are their problems with this? You bet. As an ASCAP memeber, I have yet to see a single check for my performed works. There are a lot of political (as in business politics) issues in play, which end up giving the lion's share of the collected fees to the top 1% of artists.