Monday, August 9, 2010
National Skyline The Music Industry Sinks, While P.R.O.s Are Sittin' Pretty
Posted by Tracy Moore on Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:10 AM
The New York Times Sunday mag has a pretty interesting story this week on all that, told from the vantage point of how they track down and (inevitably) collect licensing fees from every hole-in-the-wall bar, venue or beauty parlor that plays their artists' music. But this isn't a tale about labels suing grandmothers and college kids who download illegally. It's about tracking down the lady who runs the Coyote Flats Cafe and Bar in Aguila, Texas, so she'll cough up the $16 a week in fees for the music she pipes in through a karaoke machine, TVs, and CD players.
The story follows Devon Baker, a woman who works out of BMI's Nashville HQ and travels the country trying to get people to pay anywhere from $300 to $9,000 a year to play tunes. (If you know anyone who's come out of the recording industry program at MTSU, you probably know someone who's worked at BMI or in publishing at Sony, scanning in copyright info or tracking down licensing violators on the phone.)
And surprisingly, she isn't as aggressive as you'd imagine: Because BMI has never lost a case they've tried in 51 years, they're able to approach the whole thing more like a chess game in the mail. They'll call, and call back. They'll send letters, maybe drop by. The reason? It's easier to rest easy when you're a little bit ahead of the game. They're like the Netflix of the music industry:
“We’re not about shutting things down,” [Richard Conlon, V.P. of new media at BMI] told me. “We’re about nurturing markets. We don’t want people NOT to use it. We know the market is fractionalizing. You wanna take our music and stream it and have electronic whatevers that play when you stick a chip into something or somebody? Go ahead! Do it! Just pay us!”
Comments (11)
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The reason the record business is in the tank doesn't have so much to do with technology, other than piracy-enabling peer-to-peer networks. All the majors and most indies have digital delivery, and some records still make big numbers, so why are sales suffering?
1. The expectation to exceed historic highs around 2000, which is the bottom-line mentality of people who don't really understand what drives record sales. The demand for quarterly profits has resulted in weak product, and diminished expectations.
2. Marketing being the focus rather than A&R, meaning marketers in A&R positions. Even if development is occuring at the label, they still don't understand what constitutes a good song. Their idea of great is something that cost a lot of money.
3. Excessive mastering levels that makes listening unpleasant for extended periods. The loudest record may win at radio, but it isn't translating to sales.
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the idea of ASCAP being viewed as forward thinking is amusing to me... "cutting deals" would be a generous use of wordage there.
the issues faced in this context are virtually the same as those faced in the education context. a growed-up member of the republic would be eye-to-eye with owning her/his own data. same way dave ramsey datafies personal finance and weightwatchers datifies nutrition literacy. Datafy your learning. Customize the metric and watch the measured outcomes grow. Scale that from micro to macro and you have an ecosystem for economic development.
Corman- that's good stuff.
The article was very interesting. I think they've got a point as to the use of recorded material, but I've always had a problem with the licensing for live music. It's ancient tradition for performers to choose others' works which they interpret in their own way, and incorporate into their own show. That shouldn't be a commodity.
How is recorded music different from live music in that respect? The performer gets paid for both.
The way I understand it, BMI and ASCAP can demand a fee for venues in which bands perform covers. That seems excessive. Of course you have to license a song if you are going to record it, I know we have. But just for playing a cover?
The only exception I can come up with would be if you are a tribute band, but maybe those should deal with the artists themselves.
Also, what does BMI do when the original title-holder can't be found? I was reading the notes on Black Rio 2 yesterday, and they had a disclaimer that some of the rights-holders could not be located. I bet BMI would charge a fee anyway and pocket that shit.
Lately ASCAP has been hitting up independent record stores asking for fees. There is an exemption for record stores since we sell the music we play in-store but the greedy bastards have been sending those letters, hoping to dupe some unsuspecting stores. We got ours recently at Grimey's and I had the NARM guys to get ASCAP off my back. One of the things ASCAP was saying to some stores was that the in-store live performances were not exempt. This is not true and NARM will help if anyone else is in this situation. One of my store-owning buddies, from Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis, told me to just respond to the P.O.s by saying "just tell me which artists not to play in my store and we'll quit giving them in-store play. While we're at it, we'll just quit stocking their releases too. Just send the list" He told me he sent them a letter to that effect and never heard from them again.
Burrito, remember that the performance royalties aren't going to the band that you're covering (per se)--they're going to the people who wrote the songs. In many cases these are the same people, but not always, and much less so for older songs. Thinking in terms of "covers" is misleading here. A venue is paying royalties so that you can perform a SONG that someone has a copyright on--not so that you can do a cover of a RECORD. It's not necessarily a band that has the copyright on it--it could be a little old lady who wrote some songs years ago and now lives on the royalties. Because you are performing her song for economic gain, you have to pay her some of the money. Say that you are a songwriter but not a performer, and thus have no chance to make money off your songs at live gigs. Wouldn't you want a taste of what a band gets when they play your songs?
Of course, it isn't as if you play "Pablo Picasso" at Springwater and Springwater sends Jonathan Richman a check for $.17. Springwater pays money into a big fund (either BMI's or ASCAP's) and the fund is divided up among member songwriters according to some sort of formula. That's how I understand it anyway. If anything here is wrong I'll be happy to stand corrected.
More info about how indie artist can make money by selling music online: http://www.howtosellyourmusiconline.com/
It's not necessarily correct to say that ASCAP and BMI "track down and (inevitably) collect licensing fees from every hole-in-the-wall bar...." At least they are not legally ENTITLED to do so. There is a federal statute called the "Fairness in Music Licensing Act" which exempts small business establishments from ASCAP and BMI collections if those business owners meet the specific requirements of that statute. (Those requirements have to do with the square footage of the business and other factors.)
It very well may be, though, that ASCAP and BMI are collecting money from many businesses which don't know of their rights under that statute.
For more information about the statute, Google "Fairness in Music Licensing Act".
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