Leading on from the copyright law thread, as songs like Happy Birthday are still technically under copyright, how on earth do they work out royalties from things like public performances. Surely they can’t check every time a group of Dopers bursts into a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday on the arrival of cake and birthday person into the village hall 
Someone who knows more about this than I do will hopefully be along soon to give a proper answer, but basically venues where music is played (nightclubs, etc) pay a standard fee to royalty collectors to cover any instances that may arise of copyrighted music being played.
Organisations such as the Performing Rights Society in the UK take much of the responsibility for this, dealing with licencing performances, and chasing after copyright breaches. Of course, one-man-and-his-guitar outfits in small bars are just ignored, as are spontaneous rounds of Happy Birthday, because it’s in nobody’s economic interest to bother chasing up the miniscules money to be made from these. However, if you wanted to include ‘Happy Birthday’ on a CD you’re making, you’d be well advised to get in touch with such organisations to get it licenced.
I heard a couple of radio news stories (alas, no cites) that touched on this question. One was on stadium music. They called up Gary Glitter, whose Rock & Roll, Part something plays in some arena every night somewhere. Glitter said he gets royalties, but not per song. (I’m sure you know every word of the lyrics. 
) Stadia pay a blanket fee, and he gets a little piece of that. The other story was about ASCAP’s shoppers. They check out stores and restaurants. If they have a radio station on, or if they’re playing their own CD player, and they’re not using a paid service such as Muzak®, these “shoppers” ask if they are paying the ASCAP fee. If not, they start getting billed.
You are free to play CDs you own at home, but if you play them in a store, you owe a fee to ASCAP. You didn’t know that? I didn’t either, until that story.
ASCAP and BMI require venues to pay for licenses. In radio, the stations are required to keep logs so the agencies can determine how the money gets distributed; it may be the same for live venues, or they may have some other formula.
Note that both ASCAP and BMI only cover public performances. A private party in a private home is exempt (though a private party in a public place like a restaurant requires the venue pay a fee). You can also sing a song in a restaurant as long as it wasn’t something the restaurant scheduled (but the restaurant usually has a license, since ASCAP requires a fee for any piped-in music).
If the venue has no license, and you play licensed music, then ASCAP goes after the venue.
What about a record store? Some local stores play it not just for “atmosphere” or ambience but as an advertisement of the album. Presumably to boost sales. Is this specifically excluded, or would BMI look the other way because it’s in the interest of the artist to let that stuff be played, or are record stores just as obligated to pay?
If a store plays the radio over its sound system, they are requred to pay a fee. It seems likely that ASCAP/BMI would feel the same way about playing CDs.
I speak from experience on this one!
In a store, you can play music for demonstration purposes with no fees. In other words, if I sell CDs by Cecil and the Dopers, I can play them on my store sound system all I want, but I can’t play “20 minutes in 1960” by Mariana Trench unless I also sell Mariana Trench CDs.
If you don’t sell music, you must pay fees for radio, CD, iPod, or any other kind of music you play unless you are under a certain size. For example, if your store is only 400 square feet and you have a little boom box with two speakers, you can play music without royalties. If you have a 4,000 square foot store with a ten-speaker sound system, prepare to write checks every month.
With radio, it’s a classic double-billing system. The radio station paid once to get the CD (of which ASCAP or BMI gets a piece), then they pay ASCAP and BMI to broadcast it, and then the store has to pay ASCAP and BMI again to listen to it.
Ok, I checked Amazon.com and couldn’t find either of these CDs. They sound great! Anyone know where I can get them?*
More seriously with a slight hijack - Can anyone tell me what typical fees a radio station has to pay? I asked once at a radio station tour and no one seemed to have a clue. I know the formula gets very complicated depending on market share and other factors, but I’m trying to get a ballpark figure. Even a specific example such as: Playing “20 Minutes in 1960” on WCCL in Chicago during the afternoon commute, a radio station has to pay $___ to broadcast the song. Is it closer to $0.05, $50.00 or $500.00 to play it? Or is it not really based on individual songs but instead a blanket fee depending on your market? I’ve wondered about this for years. Any background on this aspect of radio-biz would be very appreciated.
This is one reason a lot of restaurants, when they have some sort of “birthday special” (big cake and singing waiters, etc.) sing a song that’s NOT “Happy Birthday” to the birthday boy (or girl). But it’s okay for the family to sing “Happy Birthday” themselves.
There’s a new system to that uses digital fingerprints created by the audio data, Boradcast Data Sysems (BDS) (note their website sucks). Participating radio stations have their broadcasts monitored and when the computer regonizes the fingerprint or othe charactersitic digital pattern of a song, it make a little note of it.
Right now the data is mostly tabulated for things like Billboards Charts and whatnot, but I would expect as the system expand sover time it will be an easier way of tracking plays in general. The information is quite detailed and its saves the hassles of radio stations loggin everything themselves.
They’re both from 1920’s-Style Death Ray Productions, based in the suburbs of Chicago. They’re latest hit is “Pit Me Baby, All Night Long.”
It’s not really measured on a song-by-song basis, but it’s a heckuva lot closer to $.05 in our small rural market. I have no idea what it would be in Manhatten.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrgh. Preview after editing. Preview after editing…
I’m in Australia, so the acronyms are different (APRA, PPCA etc), but the idea is the same. I teach dance classes. I have to pay a licence fee in order to use music covered by them in my classes. If I only use music they don’t cover then I wouldn’t need to pay them anything - but that would be very hard to do - a few folk performers I know use only specific songs they know are public domain, and only their own performances.
I also need a licence to use copies of music - if I only used original CD’s I wouldn’t need this licence, but I’d have to carry all the original music around. If I take a track off this album, one off that, put them on a minidisc and play from that then I need to pay a licence to let me do that. I also pay a licence fee which lets me make limited copies of a track to give to my students so they can use it to practice for a dance.
Note that no-where do they actually take any notice of what I play. Any monies actually remitted by these organisations to the recording companies (and theoretically the artists) is distributed by some formula of their own. I doubt the bands I actually use get much (or any) of it.