All Shook Down

ASCAP’s Laurie Hughes says the piece was a setup by a Wall Street Journal editor who was a relative of a Diablo camper. “First, let me say that ‘The Macarena’ isn’t in our catalog. And Camp Diablo was not on our mailing list.” Hughes went on to explain that ASCAP sought to license only “resort-style” camps where rich kids were getting treated to live entertainment, and that they weren’t looking for a cut each time the Girl Scouts sang “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

“It’s still frustrating that ASCAP is giving misleading information about it,” said the Wall Street Journal’s Lisa Bannon, when told of the “setup” charge. Bannon told The Rake that the tip for the story did indeed come from an editor with a relative at the camp. But she witnessed the silent Macarena for herself, and saw the ASCAP mailing the camp had received. Bannon credits the PR disaster—not an essential fondness for Girl Scouts—for getting ASCAP to back down.

But even if the Girl Scouts are safe, the gloves are off when ASCAP calls around here. Though federal court records show very little action by ASCAP in this district, their threats to litigate continue. “Every time they talk to me, they’re going to sue me,” said a West Bank bar owner, who asked not to be named. A St. Paul coffee-shop owner who used to pay for licensing decided recently to simply avoid music from the ASCAP catalog instead. His renewal fee was sent to a collection agency.

There may be some unintended collateral damage from the PROs, too: Some of the musicians who are supposed to benefit from licensing never seem to get the kind of checks that kept Michael Bolton from starving. “I don’t have a problem with this licensing thing,” said Taco Martin, who books talent for the Cabooze. “If I can see some of the money going to the artists.” But the money isn’t getting to Cooker John, because of what’s called the “survey.”
“Surveys” are how ASCAP and BMI calculate the distribution of license fees as royalties. BMI, for example, hires Deloitte & Touche to survey about 450,000 hours of radio airplay at 10,000 stations. While there are complicated formulas and adjustments that determine exact amounts and shares, the basic idea is that large samples of radio airplay provide the most efficient method of calculating the performance frequency of a copyrighted piece of music in a given market. (ASCAP’s method is similar, but conducted in-house.)

The flaw in this method is not too hard to find. Venues may be shelling out license fees to showcase bands and play CDs that get little or no radio airplay at all. Cooker John notes that he’s had airplay on college radio, KFAI, and even Cities 97. Yet the surveys have never found him. Clubs that buy a license for Cooker John to play are still putting bread on Michael Bolton’s table, since the surveys certainly won’t miss the hits from his next release. To be fair, it isn’t only the Boltons and the Britneys who cash in on performance rights. Bo Diddley recently told the Los Angeles Times, “The only people that ever did me right, in the 1950s and all the way up through now, is BMI.

I have no regrets in my 47 years with them.” But jazz trombonist Eric Felten recently said in the Wall Street Journal that he gets hundreds of dollars more in royalties from European stations than American ones, despite having a smaller share of the overall market. That’s because European broadcasters report exactly what they play, and pay out royalties per song rather than by survey percentage.


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