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ASCAP, BMI Kiss More RIAA Assby George Ziemann -- September 18, 2009 ASCAP and BMI, the two primary performing rights organizations (PROs) in the United States, have come to the conclusion that they should get paid for the 30-second previews at iTunes. From the discussion at SlashDot, it is obvious that a lot of people aren't really clear on the function of ASCAP and BMI, or who it is that belongs to these organizations. They don't represent "the majority of artists," as one commenter offered in a description of ASCAP. They represent songwriters and publishers only. Another tried to assert that the PROs are different from the RIAA, citing ways in which they function differently. Of course, this overlooks one little detail -- the world's largest music publishers are Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal, the Four Horsemen of the music apocalypse. They want more money because, once again, their "livelihoods are threatened." This comes as a surprise, as ASCAP keeps telling its members that their royalty collections are higher than ever and costs are down, meaning more money for the songwriters and publishers. You wouldn't know that if you talked to Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters' Guild of America. We have heard Carnes' superior logic before, so today he gets two sentences.
Actually, the songwriter only earns 4.55 cents from each song sale. The other half of the 9.1 cents goes to the publisher. So Carnes starts off twisting the truth with his first 8 words. I'm not even going to try and figure out the 2-cent check. Or anything else he says, considering the SGA's reputation. Overall, this is the same story we've heard over and over for the entire decade -- We want more... You're stealing our stuff... Waah, waah, waah. I consider anything at 128k or below to be advertisement, considering that 90 percent of the audio is missing. As a result, wanting to get paid for the 30-second samples is fucking ludicrous. Since I'm an ASCAP member, this greedy stupidity applies to me and my music at iTunes and I don't want any part of it. As a music fan, this is just the latest in a long line of insults that have been sufficient to discourage me from buying even one album from the major labels so far this century. Since I'm not anticipating any radio or television airplay (ever), compounded with the fact that ASCAP stopped answering my questions 6 years ago, I've already asked what the process is to get out. September is the only month of the year you can remove yourself from ASCAP's roster. Usually, they piss me off in the spring and when September rolls around, I'm not paying attention and miss my chance. This year, ASCAP tried to tell me that I had to pay $350 a year in licensing for the handful of cover songs we offered. In response, I removed them, despite the fact that our most-listened to track was among them. It wasn't really necessary:
As long as you don't take the extra step of making an m3u file to stream your songs, cover songs are fair game, contrary to the conclusion I reached after receiving the ASCAP notice. Of course, anyone that uses some lame DRM trick to avoid letting people download without paying (RealPlayer, Flash, widgets) will have to pay. The truth is that, even though I'm a songwriting and publisher member, ASCAP conned me into removing what amounts to free advertisement for the original songs (our cover versions were never for sale -- they'd have to buy the original), which is exactly what they're trying to do with iTunes. I would expect iTunes to eliminate the previews before they give in to another pointless fee. I don't think that'll help sales at all, and ASCAP will have wasted all that lobbying money for nothing. Which is what they're doing, by the way -- taking money they've collected as royalties and putting it into the pockets of politicians. So is the Songwriters Guild, which appears to already have exceeded its budget for the year. |
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