The Steel Guitar Forum

Musicians should make money by performing, not writing songs. Copyrighting songs to prevent theft of ideas is okay, but I'm dead set against collecting royalties every time someone else's song is played.

Club owners don't pay for bands customers do.
Any band that fills up a club with paying customers
gets work. If your band is not the reason people are at the venue then you need a club owner with deep pockets and who really likes you.

I'm a member of the Performing Rights Society (PRS: UK-based); different organisation, but the same principal. I receive regular payments that they've collected on my behalf for music I've written that might get repeated on TV or radio. It's never a fortune, but I'm very pleased that they're working on my behalf - I'd never have a clue if I were trying to keep track on my own!

Broadcasting companies prefer to stay on the right side of things and rarely flout these stipulations. While I can remember some live venues sending a 'Jobsworth' scurrying around backstage to get a copy of our set-list for 'the authorities', I can see that it would be difficult to enforce in every place of entertainment.

I knew a guy who worked for ASCAP. His job was to sit in bars and write down every song he heard played. He had a drinking problem so it was a perfect gig for him.

Tell me, all who are troubled by ASCAP. Do you care if YOU get paid? If the bar can pay for the electricity, the musicians, the alchohol to serve, the rent, the water bill, they can pay the ascap fee. $1,800 a year is nothing and it guarantees that songwriters can create an income stream to support themselves and their families.

If you perform a play, you pay a licensing fee. If you play a composition that someone else wrote and get paid for it, you pay the composer who's talent, skill, and dedication made the song possible.

ASCAP and BMI are about as american as apple pie. It is the hallmark of capitalism: if you invent something, you should get paid for it. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

I'm dead set against collecting royalties every time someone else's song is played.

Then the quick answer is, don't play anyone else's songs. Write all your own material.

Well said, Bill!

Those who are opposed to ASCAP and BMI, try to imagine how good your band would sound without those songs you're so fond of covering.

"We don't have gigs anymore because of club owners like him. They always want music or entertainment to help the business, yet they are unwilling to pay for it."

You nailed that one, Alvin!
When a club is packed, the owner thinks it's because his is a happening place; when it's slow, it's the band's fault.
How many of have heard this spiel: "Times are tough-I'm gonna have to ask yall to work for less, and no more free burgers or chicken wings, and here's your two drink tickets." I doubt the bartenders, waitstaff, etc., will be treated the same way, and you can be sure the manager telling you this is not taking a pay cut or working for a percentage of the bar receipts.
This is the something-for-nothing attitude that is used to justify not paying musicians or composers for their work

Bill McCloskey wrote:ASCAP and BMI are about as american as apple pie. It is the hallmark of capitalism: if you invent something, you should get paid for it. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

A'yup. Many a day when the little royalty check I got from BMI put food on the table for a few weeks.


Paul -- I'm really sorry your gig got killed. I completely empathize with you 'cause I've had a lot of downs to go with the ups in my 20-plus year career as a professional musician. But it's the bar owners fault, not ASCAP's. Thankfully -- for those of us who are professional musicians and rely on our songwriting to support us and our families -- most bars, nightclubs, retail stores that play music, restaurants, etc willingly pay the fee. It's just a cost of doing business.

I'm for ASCAP & BMI......
The bar owners know better.....

Deleted for irrelevancy.

......

I think it's nice that people write songs and if it weren't for them, the rest of us would never get to play in a club or anywhere for that matter. The trouble with it is they get payed for that song for the rest of their lives and even their decendents get in on the act when they die! I've said this before and I'll stick with it this time, doctors that save our lives performing heart surgery or even transplants get payed once for each miracle they do but songwriters get payed the rest of their lives. I have a real problem with that. Sorry but they are just people who write songs, not gods. I know that all songwriters would disagree with me and I guess as long as they can suck on this endless nipple they'd agree on anything that keeps them in the bacon but I just don't consider their talent to be any greater or even as great as the musicians that record these songs. Like the doctors, the pickers get payed just once for their work and then they have to go on to the next song to keep getting payed. Being a former club owner I can tell you I had many run ins with Ascap and BMI and I think they make more than enough money from the radio stations and big corporates that really make a lot on these songs but to harass these little places that give the pickers a place to play is just overkill. These people are no different than the unions that have all but killed the auto industry. I think five years to cash in on a hit is more than enough for simple work like songwriting! It's just not brain surgery!

I'm a little surprised at how poorly the ASCAP and BMI systems are understood. Y'all are musicians of one sort or another, this stuff is like Music Biz 101. Knowing about royalties and how they are obtained from venues, labels, publishers and so on is pretty darn important regardless of your status as a song writer, composer or performer.

I know that lately the notion of intellectual property more often than not refers to computer software and applications but anything you create be it a work of art, a novel, a movie, a photo essay,
anything that can be copyrighted, if someone is making money off it, you should get your cut. ASCAP, BMI and The Harry Fox agancy make that possible.

Sorry about your gig though, I've had it happen to me too.

Bill Bassett
Rimrock AZ

Bill Bassett, very well said!

Frank:

Bill's put it much as I was about to. A surgeon performs an operation or, if you will, a service for which he gets paid. You as a jobbing musician do the same. But an intellectual property or a creation should be recompensed every time somebody makes money from it - a playwright is paid every time someone buys a ticket to see his play on the stage (indirectly, of course, but he's paid nonetheless). Songwriters clearly fall into the same category.

Without the fruits of their creativity there'd be nothing for the actors to perform - or steel-players to play fills behind.

And if that same surgeon invented a new surgical device, said surgeon would, and should, receive compensation for his contribution to serving the infirm.

This is how capitalism works.

but I just don't consider their talent to be any greater or even as great as the musicians that record these songs. Like the doctors, the pickers get payed just once for their work and then they have to go on to the next song to keep getting payed.

I'd say, first, there are a lot of people, especially former club owners, who feel this way, which is why organizations like ASCAP exist.

Can't the same argument be made for rappers who sample other people's work? that seems to bother people big time, but it is the same thing: you are taking what someone else created and making something new out of it.

Not a new problem. Most of the bebop songs where "written" over known chord changes to avoid paying royalties. Composers have been used to being ripped off for years.

Anyone think George Harrison shouldn't have been sued for My Sweet Lord?

And if that same surgeon invented a new surgical device, said surgeon would, and should, receive compensation for his contribution to serving the infirm.

This is how capitalism works.

The essence of capitalism is about rewarding someone who works and takes a risk. That surgeon would receive a patent, not a copyright, and the term of a patent is very short in comparison to a copyright.

We've had lots of these discussions before - you'll find them in some old threads, it's a pretty divisive topic, much like politics or religion. I'm emphatically for protection of intellectual property. But I completely disagree that songwriting or other copyrightable works deserves mo' better protection than inventions. I think 10-15 years, with the possibility to renew once if it is shown that the initial investment can't be recouped in the initial period, is plenty of time to give any types of creators a monopoly on usage of their work. This is a state-sponsored monopoly - the courts have to enforce this stuff, and I think the current system is corrupt.

Look - I understand nobody benefiting from the current system is going to agree with me. It's about, "Hey, I'm getting mine, tough luck for you." But I really think there needs to be significant change. It's probably not going to happen, so we're stuck with this - there's no point in complaining. Club owners need to either put up or shut up, unless they can find a way to get this adjudicated differently.

My opinions, naturally.

Yes, Club owners should put up or shut up!

It appalls me to see such resistance among musicians to royalty collection. We songwriters need protection against radio, tv, bars, and theaters whose owners would only be too happy to exploit the tunes for free and fill their pockets. Do you think it's fair for a radio station to attract listeners by playing free music which in turn attracts listeners to ads - their bread and butter? I don't think so.

Liken it to book publishing for a minute. Say the law was that authors only got fifty years on a copyright. That would mean that in about twenty years any tool with a printing press could bang out a thousand copies of a Stephen King novel and make a load of money selling them. Is it fair to Stephen King's children (who probably saw him through his last days) that some thief see a profit from their father's work? Consider for a moment that maybe creators compile a body of work as a monetary legacy by which their descendants can subsist, much like what a lot of us do when we squirrel away money for our kids to ease our minds about them not starving when we die.

If you're a steel player who plays other people's songs and makes money from it (and yes that includes instructional material), yet you're against royalty collection, you're a downright hypocrite.

Marty Holmes wrote:The first time i realized what ascap was it made me MAD AS HELL!!!!! I think a bar owner should be able to hire a band,or have a jukebox without having to worry about paying some little rinky dink chickens*** politician that thanks you should pay a fee for playing live music in a bar.I wish i knew who invented ascap because i would rub his a** raw with a corn cob for thirty minutes,and the pour turpintine in it!!! Sorry BoB this subject really Pi**es me off!

By the way, this is an insult to every songwriter who penned the songs that line your gigging pockets.

In six years on this forum, nobody has been able to give what I consider a good, logical explanation - rooted in premises based on basic principles instead of legal mumbo-jumbo - why popular songs deserve so much longer protection than, let's say a medical invention or pharmaceutical, which receive much shorter patent terms. If the prime consideration is the family of the creator, why the distinction? Are the families of inventors less important than the families of songwriters? I think that issue is a complete red herring and has nothing to do with patent vs. copyright terms.

I think this type of inequity plus a sense of corruption in the copyright enforcement system are why many people have such a negative attitude towards copyright law and enforcement. With due respect, I don't think I'm being hypocritical at all.

I really don't want to have a debate - we've done that many times - but I think the rhetoric could stand to be toned down all around.

Bill Bassett wrote:I'm a little surprised at how poorly the ASCAP and BMI systems are understood. Y'all are musicians of one sort or another, this stuff is like Music Biz 101. Knowing about royalties and how they are obtained from venues, labels, publishers and so on is pretty darn important regardless of your status as a song writer, composer or performer.

I know that lately the notion of intellectual property more often than not refers to computer software and applications but anything you create be it a work of art, a novel, a movie, a photo essay,
anything that can be copyrighted, if someone is making money off it, you should get your cut. ASCAP, BMI and The Harry Fox agancy make that possible.

Sorry about your gig though, I've had it happen to me too.

Bill Bassett
Rimrock AZ

WOW...You are SO right....Someone understands the concept..

Sorry Dave,,,I misread your post....Your right...As usual

Bill McCloskey wrote:Then the quick answer is, don't play anyone else's songs. Write all your own material.

That's what I prefer to do. The royalties for live public performance of other people's music is just one more reason why I hate playing cover tunes.

Bill McCloskey wrote:ASCAP and BMI are about as American as apple pie. It is the hallmark of capitalism.

I never cared much for the American version of capitalism, but that's another argument altogether.