Looking in the entertainment section of my local paper, I see numerous tribute bands coming to my nearby small city and somewhat close larger cities. Pink Floyd (two different ones), Led Zeppelin, Heart, Beatles, Foreigner, Queen, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. have all had their tribute bands come nearby. We have a local summer performance series, and for the past few years all they get are tribute bands, which doesn’t interest me much.
I sort of understand the appeal, but they seem to be very popular now. I’m also wondering how the legalities and royalties work. Most or all of these bands wrote their own songs. Do they get paid from these tribute bands as either songwriters, publishers or original performers? Do tribute bands need to get permission from the original artists to use their songs, likeness, styling and essence?
Not an answer, but I’m going to a see a band tomorrow night called Hairball and they do it all from AC/DC to Ozzie and then some. It’s really a good show!
This week’s LA Weekly has a cover story about the Los Angeles tribute band scene. Apparently there are over 1300 active tribute bands in Southern California. The article doesn’t go into the royalties questions at all.
Any live venue pays ASCAP performance fees, usually under a general license. Anyone can perform any song there and the songwriters are paid though the venue’s licensing fees.
The venue gives a setlist of all their performers and ASCAP determines how the royalties are doled out. It’s the same setup as used by any cover band making a public performance.
As for the rest, I don’t know of any restrictions on imitating a band as long as you’re not claiming to be that band.
It was supposed to be plethora, which is indeed a word. But, thaenks for the correction.
Thanks. That makes sense, I guess. Is there a standard procedure for artists to provide their setlists to venue managers, who then pass it on to ASCAP? I would guess there is. What about small bars? Somehow, I can’t picture a small bar owner doing this? Or do bands do this on their own?
These bands are popular because people like to hear the songs they know. They don’t really care who the hell is playing the music as long as it sounds good and the’re having fun.
I’m not familiar with the mechanics of it. Someone had to get the info to ASCAP. I’d guess the band would be responsible for supplying the list, since they would know all the song titles and artists. They just need someone to write down the information as they play.
I’ve never been in a tribute band, but every band I’ve been in has played a few covers. We’ve never been requested to submit our set lists.
Now, I imagine most of the places I’ve played were too small and difficult a target for a Performing Rights Organization to go after, but some of them certainly weren’t. The licensing orgs do offer blanket licenses, and I imagine the larger venues buy them just to avoid any headaches. Also, the Association of Concert Bands offers a blanket license to performing bands which allows them to report the songs they performed yearly, but I’m not certain what it takes to qualify for membership.
A strange thing I hadn’t thought of before I got into licensing: I have licensed some songs for recording, but to save the hassle of tracking down the licensing for obscure songs, I paid a broker to track it down and I just paid them (trust me, it’s worth the money). There were some recordings that were certainly within copyright, but the writers weren’t represented by the large orgs, and the broker couldn’t track them down even when they looked internationally. So, they said they’d pay the copyright office, and I’d be covered.
This might be legal advice, but it wouldn’t be legal advice to me, so I guess it might be OK to ask it here: If the writers in question decided they wanted to get their royalties, could they collect it from the copyright office?
Imitating a band’s style, stage show, and other unique elements could potentially be grounds for an infringement lawsuit, even if the tribute band isn’t claiming to be that band. The trick is that most artists & bands don’t mind tributes and even appreciate them (Genesis are reportedly big fans of The Garden Wall, from what I’ve heard.) There’s also the problem of looking like a mean bully when a rich & famous band tries to crush their devoted fans out of existence.
Some artists aren’t so laissez-faire. Prince and Metallica, in particular, are notorious for sending cease & desist letters to tribute bands. Dweezil Zappa was prevented from calling his band “Zappa Plays Zappa” when his greedy control freak no-talent siblings Ahmet & Diva invoked their control of Daddy’s estate, the whiny jerks.
I actually did a little reading on this after starting the thread. As mentioned above, there are systems in place for songwriters and publishers to get royalties when bands (both cover bands and tribute bands) perform their songs. This generally works in larger settings, but not so well for small venues like bars.
As far as other compensation or permission, the original artists generally don’t need to give permission to any tribute bands, nor do they have any say in how the imitators look, dress or sound. The main protections involve deception or purposeful confusion. A tribute band can’t adopt the original band name, nor pretend in any way that they are, or are connected to, the original. But so long as a tribute band markets themselves as such, they are free to do what they want with no permission from or compensation to the original artist.
All of this is a bit harder when the original band is still intact and/or performing. The Beatles have been long defunct, of course, and two members are dead, so there is no confusion regarding tribute bands. But even for still-performing bands, if a tribute band has 20-something members mimicking the early Rolling Stones, for example, there is really no confusion regarding which is the real band.
As mentioned directly above, most artists like having tribute bands. It not only increases their public awareness, it also broadens their appeal to new fans, and sells more of their old records. It’s actually a win-win for all involved.
The tribute band The Musical Box is an interesting case. They are a Genesis tribute band, recreating stage shows from the Peter Gabriel era. They actually have the full support and cooperation of the original band, even as far as supplying them with original costumes and stage elements.
No, they’d get their royalties from ASCAP (or BMI)
And ASCAP is pretty aggressive on getting its royalties. I once was treasurer for an organization which had an annual meeting and they sent me a letter warning me that if we played music, we’d have to pay their fees (luckily, we didn’t have public events, and any music was played and covered by the venue).
The ASCAP page makes it pretty clear that you need to pay fees. But they vary on various conditions: size of the venue, whether the music is live or recorded, etc.
BMI puts their information online. Looking at it quickly, a bar with a capacity of 50 people that has live music one night a week would pay $225 per year. If they also played recorded music, it’s be an additional $147.50 (same price for recorded music only).
I may have been wrong on the record-keeping (though I do know that, in radio, you must have a log of all the songs you play), but the licensing is required by any public venue, from a corner bar to Madison Square Garden.
The unfair part is that the PROs apportion the fees they collect based on sales rather than the actual songs performed at the venues, so bands that attract a lot of tributes aren’t necessarily the same as bands that sold a lot of records. I wish they’d switch to reporting set lists.
I enjoy a good tribute band, especially when the original band has evolved into doing different music. The Musical Box that Shoeless mentioned does songs that the Collins era *Genesis *stopped doing.
The Zappa family feud was created by the late Gail Zappa who changed the terms of the Trust Frank set up to give Ahmet and Diva 30% and Dweezil and Moon 20%. And she had this bizarre idea that any band performing an evening of Zappa music owed Broadway type “Grand Rights” that you would have to pay for a full production of Phantom of the Opera.