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I am not against ownership of the property. I am not against the artist being paid. What I am against is the blanket rules developed and carried on by a bureaucracy of lawyers & high paid execs.



If you knew the real history of the thing, you might feel differently.

Actually, it was the artists, the musicians, the bandleaders, etc. who at one time campaigned to be protected from the literal theft of their means of supporting themselves and their families.

And it still is.

The lawyers and executives are actually the paid servants of the artists here.

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I was a house builder for many years. When I sold a house we agreed on a price and that was it. Now if I had wanted to I could have had the deed drafted up so that each time the house changed hands I would receive 20%. Sounds sort of stupid doesn't it? The same arrangement with songs.



Bad analogy - the house is built ONCE. After that, its value is based upon it being there and being real, hence the term, "real" estate.

The song performance, on the other hand, has what we call an *intrinsic* value.


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I'm just sort of frustrated to hear a lot of my fellow musicians talking about loosing their jobs because ASCAP/BMI has come in and demanded large fees from small clubs that can't afford this extra burden and then the $$$ doesn't even go to the artist it goes to this big perpetual machine. Sorta like the direction the USA is headed.



That is not true.

The artist who created the song and owns the copyright does indeed get periodic checks from the licensing agencies.

As a matter of fact, some of those executives whom you demean are employed fulltime to expedite such dispensation fairly, based on formula.

Any venue selling alcohol should be making a tidy profit. The fee, based upon the seating count in the venue, is actually quite affordable. Some places may have more seating than they actually use at any one time, which may be problematic. But if they want to use live music performance for a draw and also want to have musicians who are playing cover songs and not all original music, they *should* pay the licensing for the priviledge.

You should visit the webpages involved in this licensing and see for yourself what the fee charges, typically based on 6 months or a year, really are.

You should also investigate the typical markup on a beer, and on a mixed drink.

The venue owner *should* just consider this rather small licensing fee as just another part of the cost of operation and figure the single sales prices accordingly. They won't go broke, because any and all costs of operation of any business, taxation, licensing, overhead, etc. must be figured into the retail prices of what they are selling. That is passed on to the customers in the sale prices.


--Mac

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