With all these new claimants, ASCAP and BMI now want the Department of Justice to change the terms of the consent decrees so they can have more money to spread around.
And they’re threatening that if it doesn’t, the publishers will withdraw all rights from ASCAP and BMI, which would create total chaos in the music licensing business.
The major publishers want the Justice Department to allow what they call fractional licensing. This which would require businesses that want to perform or play a song to license the rights from each owner of the song, as opposed to now when the rights are all purchased through the collectives, such as BMI and ASCAP.
This would blow up the way businesses purchase music. Today, a bar, for example, pays a free to ASCAP or BMI to play the music they control. If this were approved, that bar would have to negotiate with every holder of every right for every song it even could possibly play. Some songs have multiple rights-holders – the average No.1 hit in 2014 had 3.59 authors – and each would have to sign off.
IF individual rights holders are put in the position of representing themselves, which I doubt whether they have time or office setups that would accomodate such a thing, they wouldn't need ASCAP or BMI, whuch would cease to have a function.
The solution for consumers of music is to sponser independent music that writes and performs its own music outside of the control of the mafia publishers.
The rights organizations that have music by the nuts resemble drug organizations headed into a drug war, and it's a fitting description because of the way people are so damned addicted to music.
Take the part 15 community... many of the broadcasters strongly believe their whole purpose for being alive is to broadcast the music they think is "good".
I'm no different. I've always wanted to promote "good music" and find that not everyone really wants the same "good music" that I'm pitching.
Humans are going extinct because of the way they do things.
I suppose we could make new formats... all talk, no bumper music just all talk...
or sound effects 24/7 of course we would have to make our own effects.
How about silence and every hour we do a station ID with copyright imformation so no one can record it or re-use it? I am so tired of all this BS.
There is or was a station in Canada on the shores of the North Atlantic that has/had microphones under water to record and broadcast whale sounds.
I could strap a wireless mic on the cats and dogs, maybe they will bark or meow?
Again, sick of it.
I kind of feel the same way about this musical 'crack' that we're on. Big Music has formed a dependency in most people by being easy to access and all around us, and setting off emotional centers in the brain when we hear it.
We became ensnared in a vicious cycle of mainstream music promotion, just looking at the history of how FM radio started by playing alternative music until stations and record companies could see dollar signs in FM radio, pushing programming towards top-40 music.
Another struggle is in DVD releases of television series that use old classic songs. Producers probably saw pop music as an easy way to connect with the emotions of their fans and create a mood, like movies do.
With many series, they can't be released with the original music as they were shown on TV, because of 'rights holders' asking for too much money or not allowing the songs to be used, so the songs are replaced in the soundtrack with other songs or generic music. That means you can buy a DVD box set, but it's not completely original or archival.
I also think that web companies are doing their share of ensnaring, Facebook and Google. Google's drugs seem to be the highest quality stuff, and available on every screen, so easy and useful that you can't help but be a buyer and get stoned in the Google universe and live happily.
I also play commercial music on my station, it's off chart music though, not pop, so my idea is like a compromise, I feel for the listeners that at least it's some alternative they can hear on the radio.
I do wish that talk programs and stations could can the bumper music, they've been doing it the exact same way for so many years, that it's kind of boring. If shows wanted to have music, they could make their own or ask their fans to donate something to the show, home made music for credit.
Another thing that's kind of annoying is the way talk shows will get near the end of the segment, and the music is slowly rising under a longwinded guest or caller, and you know they're going to get cut off at a certain time, it causes undue tension. There could be a more graceful way to make the transitions, and a good host could do it all in voice.
You could record Nakeeta's howls for your station, why not? There have been "pet" radio stations with meows and barks on shortwave, and I personally have heard radio playing nature sounds before. Maybe that microphone outside idea you had is a good one.
The Weatherman, a personality from the group Negativland, wired up microphones outdoors to record the sounds of New Years, like fireworks going off.
Some Part 15 hobbyists have been talking about using more local bands and music not registered with the big-3 licensing companies or SoundEx. I would love to use more local bands (that is to say, local in other cities and rural areas) in my playlist. The problem is that there is no one-stop clearinghouse for such bands.
If there was such a clearinghouse in which webstreamers and broadcasters could, at a reasonable rate, download tracks or albums from local bands around the country, I think it would greatly benefit everyone. New or obscure bands would get much needed nationwide exposure and income, listeners would be getting some fresh music instead of the usual, tired top 100 songs and it would help keep costs at a reasonable level for all broadcasters as well as eliminate SoundEx. It might also cause the big-3 to be more reasonable in their demands for mo' money.