Karaoke: Vile Intellectual Theft!!!!!

the licensing is usually included in the price of the soft/hardware. I mean, this is a commercial use of the songs, so I'll buy it. I'm surprised it's being enforced like this though.
I like the poll on the page, very hard hitting.

i went to see my friends perform last night. their 'band' performs laptop electrofried versions of alternative and pop hits of the past 5-10yrs (pearl jam's 'daughter', oasis 'wonderwall', 50cent's '21questions', etc).

girl sitting next to me leans over and says, "man, i thought this was karaoke night, i was about to get up there and sing. i'm so embarrassed for them."

But don't they bars pay when they buy the discs for the karaoke machine? Ie the company who made the discs for the karaoke machine already paid the licensing fees. Or are those only for home use and now people who use them in bars--ie basically the only use ever for karaoke, who does it at their house??--have to pay more? I don't quite get it, cos it's not like they're ripping MP3s and downloading them to machines.

um, this has nothing to do with confusing karaoke renditions of jimmy buffett with the real jimmy buffett, or paying for cd's. right or wrong, this is how bmi and ascap work. they collect fees from every bar, restaurant, club, etc., that has any kind of music -- live, on tape, on the radio, or on karaoke machine. if you've got a restaurant and you keep the radio on, bmi will come around eventually to collect. if you've got a bar and you play your favorite cd's on a boombox behind the bar, they'll come around there, too, and they don't care if you've paid for those cd's or not. they just care that you're now playing them in your public establishment.

in theory, the idea is that every time a song by songwriter X is played in public, bmi or ascap collects a penny or two for the right of "public performance," and passes it onto the songwriter. in practice, they collect monthly or yearly fees, throw the money into a pool, and then divide it among their songwriters based on statistical samples of which songs are getting the most play.

don't know for sure if ascap does this, but i know bmi has teams in every major city whose job is to go to anyplace that might be playing music and make sure they're paying up, so there's nothing unusual or new about this enforcement.

i don't know if this is good or bad, i just know that this is how it's done.

sounds like a shakedown.
the licensing should be included in the cost of the equipment. otherwise, it sounds way too freakin' arbitrary.

well it's executed very much like a shakedown.

but there is at least some sense of small-artist-friendliness in going after venues instead of going after, say, bar bands. technically, your local bar band owes a royalty to steven tyler and joe perry every time it plays "walk this way," and technically your local nightclub DJ owes a royalty to green velvet every time he spins "answering machine." but the system is set up so that the licensing agencies make the bar or club pay, and it's the bar or club owner, not the small artist, who gets shaken down. for whatever small bit that's worth.