Finally, The Music Licensing Mafia Could Be Going Down
Posted by Michael_Byrne on Monday, Aug 02, 2010
While ASCAP seems bent on making its already effed image so much worse by attacking Creative Commons and other public domain advocates, its music-licensing peer, BMI, got stung in a landmark court decision last week in New York state.
First, a little background: ASCAP and BMI (and SESAC to a lesser extent) license music en masse to businesses that host any kind of public performance, which goes for a store playing music in the background (yes, a “public performance”) to an arena hosting a U2 show. So, if you’re using music without a license in your business, ASCAP or BMI are going to be on you like sharks on meat until you pay up. Some have called it legalized extortion. Count me as part of that chorus.
Understand that your business, even if you aren’t playing any music in the ASCAP catalog, has to pay full price for the catalog. Part of that has to do with the sheer vastness of the catalog; it’s just assumed that if you’re playing music, eventually you will play an ASCAP licensed song. And the organization will quite literally have spies in your business until that happens. And when it happens, you’re over a lawsuit barrel.
Moreover, even if you have a show by a band that wants to license outside of ASCAP or BMI—or always have bands that want to license independently—you still have to pay full price.
The ruling involves a business called DMX which licenses musics independently to businesses. That is, instead of getting the sort of blanket music license you get with ASCAP and BMI, you’re getting a smaller group of artists and songs for less money through a process vastly more transparent (and ultimately fair to artists and venues). The court ruled that BMI—in this case, but it should apply to ASCAP as well—must offer an adjustable rate license that deducts money from its total for music licensed independently.
This could be huge for a whole lot of businesses that use music. Not only is it a step in the direction of fairness, it also ups the incentive for businesses to license independently—and for artists to work with independent groups like DMX. Expect more bloody court battles over this in the near future, but I’ll go way out a limb and say this could be the beginning of the end for the music licensing monopolies.
Via techdirt.Filed under:
About the author
Michael covers physics, climate science, the future of music, and assorted things fallen through cracks at Motherboard. A native of Colorado, Michigan, and Oregon, he currently resides in Baltimore...
