Posted on 10/21/2016 1:43:18 PM PDT by Kaslin
Recently, a federal judge in New York ruled against the free market and the way music is controlled. This ruling handed down by a single judge could cause millions of businesses to be exposed to huge increases in licensing fees.
The Department of Justice has conducted a two-year investigation into the antitrust consent decrees that have ruled the music industry for years. They were interested in the way businesses such as restaurants, retail stores, and many others get their music to put customers in the buying mood. Businesses of all types must pay license fees for the right to play music. Standard way of doing things for years.
ASCAP and BMI, the two largest music power players operate under antitrust consent decrees with the Department of Justice. The consent decrees both give ASCAP and BMI immense power to control music supply, but they also protect consumers from monopolistic pricing. The big boys have been lobbying the DOJ to soften the consent decrees so they can raise prices on businesses all over the country.
The two behemoths of music have been hitting record revenues in the last few years, so it is not a case of profit margin being too tight. They simply would like to make more -- much, much, more -- and run up the prices on products everywhere in the process.
One of the little gems they are lobbying for is called “Fractional Licensing”. It basically would require each business to negotiate its own licensing agreement for each and every song it plays and with everyone who has a stake in a song. The difficulty of obtaining that type of licensing would be cost prohibitive for most businesses, especially when considering the fact that, say, 1 percent and 5 percent copyright shareholders of a song would have the same influence as a 94 percent shareholder. Not to mention that a restaurant or a bar must license millions of different works to ensure they won’t get sued for copyright infringement.
The current way of doing things is called “Whole Work Licensing”. It has worked for decades and has kept a balance between copyright protection for the song owners and allowed businesses to gain licenses to use the music they want at a fair price. The new plan will literally upset the apple cart.
Businesses will incur major headaches in the form of difficulty managing playlists, costs of licensing, and liability and infringement problems. The disruption to business would be felt across the board, from large stores to Main Street. Songwriters will find that playlists will shrink and they will have less money in their pockets. And, listeners would have less access to the music they love. So why do this?
Millions of dollars for Big Music, of course. The major music publishers (owned by the same parents as the major record labels, which make a business of suing teenagers and grandparents) view fractional licensing as an easy way to manipulate prices and pad their pockets.
After years of deliberation on this topic, in August, the Department of Justice decided to punt! They made no changes to the consent decrees and did not allow a move to fractional licensing.
That is why it so stunning that several weeks ago one judge has thrown all that away. In a classic case of legislating from the bench, Judge Louis Stanton from the Southern District of New York has ruled that the Department of Justice is wrong. This judge’s activist ruling flew in the face of long-held industry practice and all legal precedent. Worse yet, it appears that the decision might have been “pre-baked”.
The big boys of the music industry are ecstatic, while many of the new streaming platforms and businesses are set to take a hit. The power of one judge to alter the entire landscape of the music industry is rather scary.
Hopefully, for businesses and music fans across the country, this decision will be reversed on appeal.
Until then, if you like your music, I guess you can’t keep it.
If a business that plays music doesn't like the terms that these companies demand, they can turn the f#%&ing music off.
It’s an op-ed
I see. I think mine is better ... more concise. LOL.
It’s not only recorded music that’s a problem, it’s live music as well.
Unless you have artists that are playing their own original creations you have to pay the fee for them to play Top 40 or Oldies or anything less than 50 years old............
Bureaucrats would have had a ball dealing with Robert Johnson, Leadbelly and all the others with their free copying and altering of each others music.
Whatever happened to Muzak?
This isn't a patent on a lifesaving drug we're talking about -- is it?
True, but if the fees get too expensive for the small businesses like restaurants, bars and nightclubs then they will have to decide if it’s worth the cost of having live or recorded music playing to get paying customers in the door.
Large chains might keep it, but locals will probably not..........
The current way of doing things isn't all that great, either.
As the sound tech for a small town organization that stages a once-a-month open mic show that lasts about 2-1/2 hours, I see what we have to deal with, with ASCAP. And it sucks.
ASCAP has a number of 'one-size-fits-none' categories, and we're stuffed into one that dictates that we pay well over $600/year for the right not to get sued for playing maybe 10 copyrighted songs a night, 9 times during the year. (We run from September through June.) We are a very small operation, with audiences of - on a good night - of maybe 30 people, and we charge $3/person to get in. This has to cover the cost of the venue rental, equipment maintenance and the biggest of our expenses: ASCAP fees. Obviously, we're a non-profit...
Despite the fact that we meet once each month for about 2-1/2 hours, total, we have to pay the same fixed amount that a bar that features live music 2 or 3 nights a week from 9PM to 1AM.
The worst part of it is that some of our performers compose and play their own original songs, and some of them are even ASCAP members. Not a one of them has ever received a cent from ASCAP for the performance of their tunes.
ASCAP sucks.
Right — I understand that. I don’t see how that would be any different than the impact of higher beer and liquor prices, though. Every business owner will simply have to figure out how to deal with it.
It’s newsworthy because they in fact WILL, and the artists who got dragooned into supporting this will get an even worse stick than they got before.
Silence will not be golden.
True, especially the last part.
Oh, I know. I used to work for the accounting firm that audited them back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The funny part was when they moved their offices to a brand new building in midtown Manhattan, there was Muzak being piped in. BUT, there were volume control knobs along the walls in offices and hallways.
After just about every single one of them was turned off so no one had to listen to their pwn product, management turned them back up, then removed the control knobs so they couldn’t be lowered again.
I sort of took it as a bad sign that if their own employees couldn’t stand listening to it, how good a product could it be?
And don’t get me started on the white noise option they offered...
I’m a pro level musician, with an album on Amazon. I’m very familiar with the industry. And that industry is dying. There is no ‘big music’. There is no money because no one pays for music any longer - most people steal it.
You cannot make a living as a musician for the most part unless you are a big name act and you tour. Dated big acts and anything smaller struggle to just break even on the road. You make nothing on album sales.
And then you see article after article like this intimating that music should be cheaper. It should be free!
I don’t know the specifics of this deal. Maybe it is not a good one. But...
Amazon Deep Discounts Lady Gaga’s Excellent “Joanne” Album for $3.99 in Sales Panic
http://www.showbiz411.com/2016/10/21/amazon-deep-discounts-lady-gagas-excellent-joanne-album-for-3-99-in-sales-panic
Judges have too much power.
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