When someone owns a song, and they get a royalty check for other people singing that song, how do they know it’s being sung? What I mean is, OK, Michael Jackson owns all the Beetle’s songs, right? So when Paul McCartny is on tour, does Michael (or his accountant, or whoever handle’s this) get a list of which song’s Paul will sing and how many time’s he’ll sing them, or is there someone from Michael’s camp who goes with him on the tour, or does it have nothing to do with how many times he sings a song? If an artist wants permission to sing somebody else’s song and has to pay royalties, is it a one time deal, or a monthly or yearly deal?
I’ve always been curious about this. Thanks.
Oops, make that musicians, not musisians 
Jackson sold his rights to Sony some years ago.
A local musician wanted to record a Bob Dylan song on his then newest CD. He contacted the publisher and was sent a chart of fees based on number of units sold. Since this was a local release only, the musician was just going to have about 500 copies made. According to the chart, he had to pay about 5-7¢ per copy up to 1,000 (IIRC). He ended up paying the company about $35. He had expected to not be able to afford the song, but was surprised to find the fee so low. I’m WAGging, but I would imagine the popularity of the song would have something to do with it.
As for performing in concert, I think musicians pay an annual fee to the major publishing agencies (BMI & ASCAP) which covers any song they may want to perform. Again a WAG.
I had a friend who worked at a radio station and several times a year, they would have to keep track of which songs they played and used some formula to come up with a fee to pay the aforementioned publishers.
Great, thanks. Oh, and forgive my ignorance, but what does WAG mean?
WAG= Wild-assed guess 
Ahhh, IC 
As for Jackson and the Beatles–
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a951027.html
I don’t think musicians pay a fee to cover what songs they might be covering in concert, simply because that is too vague of a thing to be doing. When my band was touring we did entire tours where all we would do was covers and we never paid any royalties to anybody.
As far as radio stations go, these days it’s kept track of by means of an encoding “message” that is on the first few seconds of every song. This info gets sent to a computer and then it all gets added up and sent to the record companies which then make out royaty checks for the artists. This started back in the very late '80’s, early '90’s, along with the advent of the Soundscan system for tracking album sales, which led to the now commonplace phenomena of having albums debut at #1 on the album charts, wheras before Soundscan, only Elton John, Stevie Wonder & Bruce Springsteen had managed to accomplish that feat.
IANAL or a professional musician, but my limited understanding is that any venue that hosts live music pays a fee to ASCAP/BMI that takes care of all licensed music played in that venue. I’m not sure how those fees are distributed back out to the songwriters.
I’m not sure if a musician is required to make sure the venue he’s playing in has paid the fees, or if all the liability falls on the venue.
Dr. J
ASCAP fees aren’t paid by the musicians; it’s paid by the venue. So if you’re booked into Madison Square Garden, MSG pays a yearly fee to ASCAP for the rights of performers to perform there. They may also have to keep a song list; I don’t know. In any case, it’s up to ASCAP to distribute the royalty money; the money goes to the songwriters.
You do not have to ask permission to perform someone’s song. All you need to do is make sure that ASCAP is being paid its fees.