Re: [ARSCLIST] ASCAP follows RIAA down the road guaranteed not to make friends

["Steven Smith, King of the House, Inc." <kingofthehouse@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You know, this is nothing new, dumb as it might be. 25 years ago I had
restaurant, bar and business owners calling up my office. I owned a radio
station and they would complain that ASCAP had a rep show up one night and
present them with this threat of infringement and give them forgiveness for
immediately buying the license. In fact, we irked by the attitude. As owners
of a radio station, we paid significant sums every month to ASCAP, BMI (the
biggest and most costly) and the smaller SESAC. So we paid to play the
tunes, then they came along and charged the business to have our station on
in their establishment. Double dipping: The music was being paid for twice.
Another popular target was the smaller retail shop that might have the radio
or music on and connected to ceiling speakers. Somewhere along the line,
probably 20 years ago, there was some type of litigation and they all
reached an agreement that any shop with a small system like a single boom
box, officially for the working employee, did not have to pay the fees. But,
if the music was piped into any system, then they did have to pay. Also, for
some reason, the Pacific Northwest and Seattle area seem to be prime
targets. It is also interesting that it seems to be mainly ASCAP and not BMI
that goes for this. BMI has much more popular music licensed than ASCAP. One
time I had an audit of my station by ASCAP. I asked the auditor, a friendly
guy, about all this. He said that, when any of the employees are on vacation
in towns away from home base, they would be paid by ASCAP to make these
little stops. He said he would be doing a few himself, next vacation, to
offset the costs. Often, when going inside a bar or restaurant, you can see
a decal on the window with the ASCAP logo showing that establishment paid.
The fees are based on the business. A typical small operation, last I heard
many years ago, paid about $400 each year. It might be way different now
but, far as I know, ASCAP is still the one pushing this most. It is funny
too because someone with the ASCAP license is still not covered for the
majority of the tunes, from BMI licenses. Again, 20 years ago, I worked with
a large theater chain. They were told they had to pay ASCAP fees for the
music before and after the show. The owner of the huge Washington chain,
instead, managed to locate a bunch of music that was in the public domain.
He put that in all theaters. It was not very current, but he got around
paying out money for intermission music.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:29 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] ASCAP follows RIAA down the road guaranteed not to make
friends


> http://tinyurl.com/3bzguo
>
> I'd love to know what genius lawyer came up with this tactic, especially
since it's backfired in
> spades against the RIAA. Keep it up and even grandmas will feel it's OK to
stiff "those jerks" and
> steal music. How deep do these fools think a bar-owners pockets are? If
they get back enough money
> to feed one musician for one month, I'll be surprised.
>
> One man's opinion, etc.
>
> -- Tom Fine