BMI sues Bar

[Morizzle]

'cause that's what you get for having a band playing "Freebird", "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Mustang Sally" in one set.

 

Clonk hither

[DanL]

A local mostly original only venue here was sued and recently closed because they couldn't afford the fines from BMI. They got hit for having a jukebox and karaoke. Almost all of the actual live music was original bands. Guess they should have payed those BMI dues...

[DaveMcM]

The band should be sued for playing Freebird, Brown Eyed Girl and Mustang Sally. (just kidding) Well, maybe not regarding Freebird.

[Botanicus]

This has happened around here too, I've heard.

 

I'm certainly for songwriters getting their due, and in today's cyber world that's an increasingly difficult task.

 

But well intentioned.....or not..... this amounts to a war on live music, which is already facing diminishing returns in most places compared to what things were like a couple decades ago. What, your band has four hours of original music? More power to you, but most of us are willing to play popular songs to keep people happy and the dance floor filled.

 

Bars are also about the only places where kids just starting out can gain experience and keep practicing their craft without getting discouraged and giving up.

 

And if there are less and less gig opportunities, maybe I don't buy that second tier keyboard because I don't need it. Live music used to be a way of life for our culture, now it's almost a novelty in some areas and replaced by food and wine events in others.

 

Money.

[ProfD]

The bar would not be getting sued had they been paying those licensing fees to the PROs (Performing Rights Organization).

 

The bands have no liability in such lawsuits. It would be interesting if bar owners instead of paying fees insisted that bands play originals only.

 

Cover bands would fade away and "Freebird", "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Mustang Sally" would only play on the radio.

 

We most certainly live in different times. Cover bands are competing with DJs, sports bars and karaoke.

 

In the future, musos will no longer have the luxury of "learning on the job" i.e. getting paid to play cover tunes in bars and clubs.

[Ken Beaumont]

Guess they should have payed their protection fees...

 

Fixed that for you, extortion isn't doing artists any favors.

 

Pizzo

[Ken Beaumont]

The bands have no liability in such lawsuits. It would be interesting if bar owners instead of paying fees insisted that bands play originals only.

 

Not really, bars have been sued for original bands too.

 

Basically if you don't pay they can make your life a living hell.

 

From this article:

At the restaurant, we wanted to support local artists and decided to start having live music on Friday nights. It was a big success. Our customers enjoyed the music and the band was happy to have a steady gig. Several months later a female lawyer came into our restaurant during lunch and demanded we buy a public performance license from BMI. She wanted $3000!

 

Even though we only played original music, she said we should buy the license anyway. Apparently, even if the band members use something as minor as a Led Zeppelin riff while they tune-up their instruments thats a violation.

 

Several clubs in this area have become sports pubs and removed even their jukeboxes because they draw more people and save more money with cable television. And they can order pay events and advertise for that.

[ProfD]

The bands have no liability in such lawsuits. It would be interesting if bar owners instead of paying fees insisted that bands play originals only.

 

Not really, bars have been sued for original bands too.

 

Basically if you don't pay they can make your life a living hell.

 

From this article:

At the restaurant, we wanted to support local artists and decided to start having live music on Friday nights. It was a big success. Our customers enjoyed the music and the band was happy to have a steady gig. Several months later a female lawyer came into our restaurant during lunch and demanded we buy a public performance license from BMI. She wanted $3000!

 

Even though we only played original music, she said we should buy the license anyway. Apparently, even if the band members use something as minor as a Led Zeppelin riff while they tune-up their instruments thats a violation.

I would fight them tooth and nail especially if I knew only original music was being played in my establishment.

[Bridog6996]

Having an "originals only" policy doesn't really solve the problem, although it depends on the venue and the level of bands involved, I suppose. Your average local band probably isn't with a PRO, but if they ever bring in a band that is, they'd still potentially be in trouble. There's no difference between a band playing an original song from the BMI catalog and a band playing a cover from the BMI catalog.

[Ken Beaumont]

Who's got the money to fight a billion dollar a year industry.

So you win in court did you really win?

 

And the club down the road, what is he going to do? Either pay, or no music period!

Sending the message to other clubs that might not want to pay is a big part of this. So even if you spend a lot of money and technically win, you really lose.

[Botanicus]

I would hazard a guess that most people coming into his bar don't necessarily want to hear original music, especially exclusively, without being able to tap their feet and sing along and revisit their youth with something familiar now and then. People stop coming into bar, bar closes.

 

I never dreamed I'd find myself defending bar owners or discouraging live original music, but these days I support anybody who has the guts to book live bands, even at wages that were paid 30 years ago. The profit margin has gone out of even livelier venues since people started drinking more responsibly and no longer have a couple extra shots and beers for the road before driving home.

[MAJUSCULE]

I would hazard a guess that most people coming into his bar don't necessarily want to hear original music, especially exclusively, without being able to tap their feet and sing along and revisit their youth with something familiar now and then. People stop coming into bar, bar closes.

 

I never dreamed I'd find myself defending bar owners or discouraging live original music, but these days I support anybody who has the guts to book live bands, even at wages that were paid 30 years ago. The profit margin has gone out of even livelier venues since people started drinking more responsibly and no longer have a couple extra shots and beers for the road before driving home.

 

Depends on the bar and the clientele. If you build a community, it can work. There's one bar here that has live original music almost every night. Covers are played, but they wouldn't book a cover band on principle. If they can't find people to book, they have game/trivia nights, standup comedy, movie screenings or other events. People support it based on the atmosphere and the community it fosters. And yes, they do have touring acts which would be big enough to garner BMI/SOCAN interest. It's a small room, but it has a very big place in the Edmonton music scene.

[ITGITC]

From this article:

Several months later a female lawyer came into our restaurant during lunch and demanded we buy a public performance license from BMI. She wanted $3000!

 

 

Those damn female lawyers.

 

If it had been a male lawyer, none of this would have happened.

 

Really?

 

It's funny how they made it clear that it was a female lawyer that was causing all the fuss.

 

No offense to attorneys out there, but...

 

What do you call a lawyer at the bottom of the ocean?

 

...a start!

 

 

 

[RABid]

The annual license fee is not that much to begin with. I wonder what percentage actually goes to the bands and artists?

[Pa Gherkin]

Who's got the money to fight a billion dollar a year industry.

So you win in court did you really win?

 

And the club down the road, what is he going to do? Either pay, or no music period!

Sending the message to other clubs that might not want to pay is a big part of this. So even if you spend a lot of money and technically win, you really lose.

 

 

"You really lose" Yup,and so do local/regional musicians whose work is already pretty much dried up. This bullying is making a bad situation worse. Where do Ascap/BMI,etc. think their cash cow artists came from? That's right,many come from backgrounds as cover players and wouldn't have developed into the big money artists they became without such a background. When revenue from them dries up there won't be many to take their place because the traing ground has been eliminated due to good old greed.

 

Successful money machine acts don't magically appear out of thin air and by eliminating their proving ground via financial intimidation,these pinheads are killing the goose that laid their golden egg and destroying jobs in an economy that's already hurting most of us badly. Eventually there will be very few new artists to fill those jukeboxes or karoke machines.Of course a quick buck is the order of the day with no regard for the future or the big picture.

 

This is very poignant to me since I saw the same "Nice place. Shame if anything happened to it" act destroy yet another live venue in my locale. There must be a better way,but greed marches on. As for myself,I made it through the glory days pretty well,but the future really saddens me.

[Mogut]

.....so stop enriching these companies. Pretty easy to do nowadays

[Bridog6996]

The annual license fee is not that much to begin with. I wonder what percentage actually goes to the bands and artists?

 

Depends on the PRO. ASCAP and BMI are designated as non-profit organizations, so presumably, 100% of the money goes to the artists and publishers (after recouping operating costs, of course). SESAC is for-profit, and takes a small percentage. Each PRO has their own different formulas for how the money actually gets divvied in terms of how much one artist gets versus another artist

[B3bluesman59]

The bottom line on all this is: If you use copyrighted music, either original or covers, you are using someone's property and they deserve compensation. All forms of business pay the music fees be it radio/tv, broadway shows, films, Whatever. If you open a business that uses any kind of copyrighted material including music you have to include the fees into your costs of doing business just like you pay for electricity, gas, tv cable,water, etc. This is how songwriters get paid...by people using their music to make a profit. BMI/ASCAP,and SESAC are their collection agencies.

[piano39]

The bottom line on all this is: If you use copyrighted music, either original or covers, you are using someone's property and they deserve compensation. All forms of business pay the music fees be it radio/tv, broadway shows, films, Whatever. If you open a business that uses any kind of copyrighted material including music you have to include the fees into your costs of doing business just like you pay for electricity, gas, tv cable,water, etc. This is how songwriters get paid...by people using their music to make a profit.

BMI/ASCAP,and SESAC are their collection agencies.

 

Hate to be critical, but... This system that you describe is perfectly legal, but unethical as hell. The beneficiaries of these royalties are, for the most part, big corporations and not songwriters. Disney has managed to get lawmakers to extend copyright laws to >75 years. Their goal is to not let anything go into the public domain. Most of the songs that the bar band was cited for are over 40 years old.

 

40 years old!!! Why do these things deserve copyright protection after that long? If this was a medicine, or a patent, or anything else that you can thing of, the protection is far less.

 

Also- do not assume that BMI or ASCAP distribute funds fairly.

If your band played something esoteric, say, old Gentle Giant songs, my bet is that Taylor Swift gets the royalites.

 

On a purely artistic note, though, that band should be censored for that song list.

 

[B3bluesman59]

Also- do not assume that BMI or ASCAP distribute funds fairly.

_________________________________________________________________

"Fair or unethical" has nothing to do with it. A songwriter gets paid based on the terms of the contract he/she signed. As with a record company, you can request an audit to see if your licensing company is paying according to your contract. As far as how long copyrights last....that is something that Congress determines. It does no good to get emotional over these issues. It is the law and will be until the laws get changed or modified. Anyone going into business and using any copyrighted music of any form better be aware that it is another overhead cost they will have to deal with. In my experiences I never knew of a live music location that went out of business because of licensing fees....it does make a good excuse. In every case it was either the venue was not booking music the people wanted to hear...or the venue was being mismanaged in many other ways.

[Baldwin Funster]

i'm sick of playing in and seeing coverbands anyway. After 40 tears of playing classic rock, (We just used to call it rock) I told my last band of 8 years ive retired from playing covers. I'd rather write and record originals even if nobody ever hears them. Maybe these BMI lawsuits open up more bars to originals. If not , oh well . I do wonder about open stages though. And blues jams , if you cant play covers. That's it for SRV at the blues jams.

[Geoff Grace]

old Gentle Giant songs

Way to work Gentle Giant into the thread! Well done!

 

Best,

 

Geoff

 

 

[The Real MC]

What do you call a lawyer at the bottom of the ocean?

 

...a start!

 

Did you hear about the latest study with Viagra? It makes the lawyers taller.

[burningbusch]

Even though we only played original music, she said we should buy the license anyway. Apparently, even if the band members use something as minor as a Led Zeppelin riff while they tune-up their instruments thats a violation.

 

God forbid you ripoff one of Zeppelin's ripoffs.

 

This video series is worth a watch.

 

http://vimeo.com/14912890

 

Busch.

[NewImprov]

I've been an ASCAP registered artist for something like 20 years. I play my original tunes in bands in venues in my area pretty often. These venues are all paying the ASCAP payola, this region is notorious for having a very aggressive ASCAP enforcer. Not to brag, but I am probably one of the harder working musos in my area, playing original material. I've even had other local bands cover my tunes and play them in local venues, with my blessing, of course. So, in those 20 years of playing my ASCAP protected tunes in ASCAP paying venues several times per month, have I received a penny from ASCAP for my tunes being played? You can probably guess the answer to that one.

[Steve Nathan]

The article cited is totally one sided and typical of today's attitude that "music should be free". BMI is cast, once again as "the big bad giant corporation, and the club owner is just a poor "friend of the musicians" trying to eke out a living. Give me a break.

There's no detail on how and for how long BMI has attempted to get this business to pay for the music it uses to sell drinks to customers. Do they get their liquor for free? How about table cloths, janitor service?? Do they expect Sysco to deliver food at no cost for them to serve?

Why is it, in every other thread around here, club owners are scorned, until they are cheating songwriters. Writers are musicians too, and they have to have some way to earn a living, especially when each passing day brings another assault on their hope to put food on the table.

I've seen threads here that detail how often a band is expected to "play for free" for charity or exposure, and everyone piles on. But when it's songwriters getting screwed by Napster/Limewire/Pandora/etc., suddenly it's "screw you, leave my internet alone".

If a club owner doesn't want to pay for music, then don't have music.

[RetroVintageOld]

I support original music, but heres a news flash. The general public doesnt want to hear originals. Bars will not switch to hiring original acts. They will quit running bands period. Musicians have played covers in bars as long as there have been bars. If BMI existed in Louis Armstrongs day he would have never gotten a start. If you support live music you need to be against BMI and all the rest of them. Playing covers helps the authors by spreading the fame of thier songs . All BMI does is make lawers rich. Have you ever watched the Grammys and seen a winner thank BMI? We need to find a way to fight this.

[Bridog6996]

ASCAP is notoriously top-heavy in how they operate, both in tracking and paying artists. If you're not Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, U2, etc., you shouldn't be on ASCAP. They're not going to track your live performances. And even if they did, you still wouldn't make any money (or at least not what you should be making), because their "weighted" formula for payout ensures that pretty much all the money goes to their top 200 or so artists.

 

I don't know much about how BMI pays out. SESAC has been great to me, and is definitely a better place for a smaller artist's catalog IMHO, at least compared to ASCAP.

 

source: disgruntled former ASCAP member, current SESAC member.

[JeffLearman]

Hate to be critical, but... This system that you describe is perfectly legal, but unethical as hell.

I disagree. No doubt there are aspects of it we don't like, but it's not just unethical, it's what the copyright owners have engaged the PROs to do. (It's what copyright owners got together and formed to begin with.)

 

The beneficiaries of these royalties are, for the most part, big corporations and not songwriters.

Only because songwriters sold their rights. I'm all for songwriters having the option of selling their rights! No doubt a lot of them sell them foolishly, like the Beatles and John Fogerty, but just because many songwriters are bad businessmen doesn't mean that we should kill -- literally, kill -- the market for songwriters to be able to profit from their craft.

 

Disney has managed to get lawmakers to extend copyright laws to >75 years.

Yeah, that's a travesty. We'll hear about that again in 20 years, when Mickey Mouse is due to go public domain (for the 3rd time). It's ironic that Disney makes scads of money (its classic animated films) from *public domain* stories, yet its policies if allowed to prevail will prevent almost everything from ever being public domain again. Despite that, I don't have a problem with Disney keeping Micky damned Mouse. I do have a problem with the fact that, thanks to Disney, anyone that stumbles on an old recording post 1922 (or whenever) and can't find the owner, can't use the material without being subject to a lawsuit. EVER.

 

IMHO, the solution here is for a company to be able to extend its copyrights (all of them) annually, in one filing, with a minimal fee. If you don't file the fee, you lose your copyrights. So, the Bigs will retain their copyrights, but old stuff will fall into public domain. Or something like that.

 

Most of the songs that the bar band was cited for are over 40 years old.

 

40 years old!!! Why do these things deserve copyright protection after that long? If this was a medicine, or a patent, or anything else that you can thing of, the protection is far less.

Well, books. Even before Disney, the rule was 20 years after the death of the author. (Or was it 50?) I don't have a big problem with that, but Disney's policy of getting it extended forever has to stop. It's not in the public interest.

 

Also- do not assume that BMI or ASCAP distribute funds fairly.

If your band played something esoteric, say, old Gentle Giant songs, my bet is that Taylor Swift gets the royalites.

Yeah, it's too bad they can't do a better job, but it's possible that in the future they might be forced to. It should be up to their clients -- all those under-represented artists -- to push for this. After all, they do NOT have to register with ASCAP or BMI, they could choose another party.

 

As I understand it, the ratios are based on radio play. That's grossly unfair since what plays on the radio isn't quite what plays in venues. I'm confident that the most undercompensated songs are things like Stormy Monday, which are played at every blues jam every damn time. Those royalties should be going to T-Bone, not Pink!

 

It's too bad that owners don't have the option to do something like this:

 

Record each act for a typical month. Feed the recordings into software that identifies the songs. Pay royalties based on the recordings. Repeat this process every two or three years.

 

Venues would hate that, though: what do they get for the extra trouble? Nothing. What do the PROs get for it? Nothing, except they'd be representing their clients better. Well, they'd be better representing the clients that don't bring in the big bucks, currently. Gee.

 

So, the only party that could really force this would be the undercompensated artists, who don't have much pull with the PROs. Oh well. That's the unfair part, and it's hard to see a good solution. But maybe a class action lawsuit could do the trick. Because the T-Bone Walkers of the world ARE being undercompensated. So are The Meters ... how many times do we hear Cissy Strut on the radio? Never. On stage? A lot!

[JeffLearman]

The article cited is totally one sided and typical of today's attitude that "music should be free". BMI is cast, once again as "the big bad giant corporation, and the club owner is just a poor "friend of the musicians" trying to eke out a living. Give me a break.

There's no detail on how and for how long BMI has attempted to get this business to pay for the music it uses to sell drinks to customers. Do they get their liquor for free? How about table cloths, janitor service?? Do they expect Sysco to deliver food at no cost for them to serve?

Why is it, in every other thread around here, club owners are scorned, until they are cheating songwriters. Writers are musicians too, and they have to have some way to earn a living, especially when each passing day brings another assault on their hope to put food on the table.

I've seen threads here that detail how often a band is expected to "play for free" for charity or exposure, and everyone piles on. But when it's songwriters getting screwed by Napster/Limewire/Pandora/etc., suddenly it's "screw you, leave my internet alone".

If a club owner doesn't want to pay for music, then don't have music.

No kidding. In spades.

 

I admit I have sympathy for the little coffee house that wants a weekly open mic night, and gets hit up by the PROs based on total seating and 6 nights a week. I've heard of that, but fortunately not locally, and hopefully that's not typical.