New ASCAP crackdown on cover bands??? This could potentially suck

This is all just anecdotal but it's all stuff I've been seeing in the last week or so.

So basically, two smaller music venues in the Twin Cities are now banning bands from doing cover songs...I guess they have been warned by ASCAP that unless they pay the $3000 a year fee (which these particular places can't afford) that no band can do covers there or they will get fined.

I guess ASCAP says they have spies that go out to venues and check for violations.

Then, some friends of mine who are on tour (who actually do a fair amount of covers as part of their set), have been told by TWO places in other cities in the midwest have warned them not to play covers.

anyway this kinda sucks.

weird! they seriously have people prowling rock clubs in the hopes that some unsuspecting band will bust out a Beatles tune or something? That'd be a weird job.

It does. I wonder what the rules are as far as wedding bands, etc. -- can cover bands still make a living at events like those, or do venues like country clubs and banquet halls pay as well? (My brother plays in a cover band in Mpls and it's his primary form of income.)

Soon we'll have to go to secret speakeasies to see someone play Van Halen.

so shouting "Free Bird" at concerts will now constitute a variety of entrapment

weddings are private events so I don't think it would be a problem. ASCAP is concered with public performances.

This sounds like a job for ...
http://telescope0.logika.net/b/scope?u=www.websheriff.com%2F&c=roqklurxuywxwtuowwtorzklxuykvrkt

Who's gonna be the first dick to say, no more cover bands = bad thing???

I would have said that, but I'm not a dick.

man more and more i love cover bands. like especially the ones that specialize in one particular band, like atomic punks the van halen one that i saw.

You could look at it another way. If a venue pays the usual ASCAP fee, then you can play all the covers you want without worrying about artist permission, etc. This isn't a new thing.

Well, I don't actually want to deprive 100,000 U2 cover band musicians of a paycheck....

It's not a new thing, but I think most of us are comfortable living in a world where venues below a certain size aren't heavily policed on this stuff. Obviously everyone's going to have a different threshold for feeling like it's going too far, with like rights anarchy on one end and fines over high school Battle of the Bands events at the other

ha there is no way this is going to actually be enforced

It's not a new thing, but I think most of us are comfortable living in a world where venues below a certain size aren't heavily policed on this stuff

^this

like i get that a big danceclub or something should.

Put it this way: One of the "venues" i mentioned in the original post makes WAY more money off selling bowls of soup and coffee than it does music.

most people's fears would probably run more toward "chilling effect" then "enforcement," but it's hard to imagine a huge amount of either

restaurants have to pay ASCAP dues if they want to play music too

it is enforced, I used to do this for a living. for the competition, though. BMI.

you guys will really freak out when I tell you establishments technically need to have licenses from ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC

guys I don't think anyone is unfamiliar with or shocked by the way this works

it is enforced, I used to do this for a living. for the competition, though. BMI.

― 鬼の手 (Edward III), Wednesday, February 25, 2009 2:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? when was the last time BMI collected a fine from a venue or band for allowing a cover song to played without a fee?

*FREAKING OUT*

what is the proof of that sort of thing anyway?

yeah would making a recording as evidence constitute a copyright violation?

yeah would making a recording as evidence constitute a copyright violation?

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Wednesday, February 25, 2009 2:35 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure it always has?

i don't really know what i'm talking about

i mean if you're the guy working for BMI or ASCAP or whatever

shazam

wow this is really annoying

I used to work for a classic rock radio station that stopped playing Bob Dylan because it didn't want to pay SESAC dues.

ed i know how it's supposed to work

but honestly both of these places have operated for years under the radar, with not much problem..

it's not as if these places specialize in cover bands anyway, but something has definitely scared them in the last month or so.

which places, btw? or do you not want to name names on an internet

if any venue ever tells me i can't play a cover i'll just mock their lack of ROCKANDROLLREBELLION credentials and call them pussies until they capitulate

and then i'll play my FUCKING VERLAINES COVER

xpost

b1g vz and ac@d1a (which obv if you know the 2nd one you realize how silly it is for them to be "investigated")

Does the 2nd one still book a few singer/songwriters each night? I think it's those coffeehouses that often get these visits?

I should admit that I would fully enforce a vigorous campaign specifically enforcing the rights to "Brown Eyed Girl," especially at the bar down the street that does all the open-mic sounding acoustic shows

would fully ENDORSE

the fucking verlaines, are they as good as the verlaines?

I should admit that I would fully enforce a vigorous campaign specifically enforcing the rights to "Brown Eyed Girl," especially at the bar down the street that does all the open-mic sounding acoustic shows

ditto "The Piano Man" (not that I've heard it in about 15 years, but just on the off chance it comes up...)

no, they suck
xpost

february made me shiver

with every paper i delivered

Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside

The day

the music

died.

lol

This will probably sound corny, especially since I imagine everyone here finds such things really annoying, but I do sort of think there's something important and wonderful about the whole culture of local coffeehouse / bar-band music that's not really trying to accomplish anything. Some moment came when I started feeling like there was something really lovely and admirable about, say, middle-aged people who just enjoy going out with an acoustic guitar and playing class-rock covers for a dozen people in a room. (But the place down the street always leaves the door by the stage open, so less "Brown Eyed Girl" would be nice.)

how will this affect The Venue at new cross gate?! will they pay up? will i ever get to see aRe.wE.theM.?!

the best thing for the venues to do is try to quietly negotiate, try to work with the licensing agencies to come to some common agreement. too many of them outright refuse, become antagonistic, and/or ignore the problem until the loggers show up and they get named in an infringement suit.

if you're skeptical that anyone gets sued over this, just google BMI or ASCAP and copyright infringement

http://gothamist.com/2007/06/26/4040.php

clubs unfortunately do get shut down because of not paying licensing fees. ASCAP & BMI end up in a bind, because if they heavily publicize the copyright infringements suits they file, they get accused of being bullying extortionists. on the other hand, if they don't make the ramifications of being unlicensed clear, bar & club owners ignore them and they end up in court. it's unfortunate, I've seen places shut down because some obstinate bar owner thought he was going to beat what he thought was a bullshit case.

you don't know fun until you've tried to explain to a bar owner in new jersey that he has to pay money to play music in his establishment because of title 17 of the us code.

that said, small clubs with original music are not well served by the system.

our local club has had a no-covers policy for quite a while.

http://www.as220.org/docs/boycott_faq.pdf

I love this place with a passion but their rationale for not licensing is questionable. I mean, this statement is flat out wrong: "While we recognize some musicians make a decent cut from royalities paid by performing rights organizations, licensing fees rarely reach those who wrote the music."

cap'n save-a-PRO

xp: yeah, it's just that I never filled out the paperwork!
(That's 11 dollars split six ways btw)

Ask pashmina about this. they phoned him at his shop wanting him to pay for a license to play music in his shop a few years back.

not sure about the UK but that's exempt in the US. falls under "display of goods".

oops, that's assuming pash's shop is a record shop

I think it's a bicycle shop.

Actually, if you had a shop that sold *anything*, and had a record section, would that get round the rules?

as long as you were playing records you were selling, yeah

M@tt, not that this is comforting, but ASCAP's been doing this since forever to small all ages venues.

SoCal got hit with that shit in 1999 or 2000.. then never heard a peep again.

Lazy boogeyman at it again. yawn.

In amateur live music, this definitely sucks. They should rather crack down on Pop Idol and forbid that Pop Idol acts sing anything else than their own originally written songs. Now that would be something good for music. :)

joining the chorus of some of the others here, but one of slc's smallest venues (kilby court) has had the no covers policy for 4 or 5 years now due to some local ASCAP enforcers. before playing there, you have to sign an agreement that you won't play covers, but i've heard more than a few bands play some anyway (grizzly bear playing 'she hit me, it felt like a kiss')

couldn't a band just play really obscure covers and just not tell anyone it's a cover?

Merzbow covering Masonna

lol @ geirbot

Merzbow covering Masonna

Skimmed this as "Merzbow covering Madonna," which would be great.

How exactly is this illegal? Bands have been playing cover songs for decades!

longer than that. Playing cover songs wass only legal because the places people play have been paying ASCAP/BMI licenses.

Anyone caught singing "Danny Boy" at Molly Malones will now find their ass out on the street.

A place I tried to get a booking at last year said they only want cover bands. Maybe I should call them back and ask them if they're reconsidering their stance on original music.

How exactly is this illegal? Bands have been playing cover songs for decades!

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, February 26, 2009 3:19 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

a century even!

The U.S. copyright law of 1909 provided the basis for ASCAP's existence. This law gave artists rights to how their work was used just as patents protected inventors of more tangible creations. The 1909 law applied to public performance of musical works as well.

A nostalgic version of ASCAP's birth recounts composer Victor Herbert hearing one of his songs being slaughtered in a New York cabaret and thereby becoming inspired to stop illegal infringements. Herbert was apparently one of a group of nine who met in a New York restaurant in October 1913 to create a performing rights organization. Nathan Burkan, an entertainment lawyer, and Englishman George Maxwell were also in attendance. ASCAP's first official meeting was held on February 13, 1914, whereupon Maxwell was named its first president. The group started out with about 100 members.

ASCAP's mission was essentially to enforce the 1909 copyright law by compiling member works into a catalog and hiring personnel to monitor their public performance. ASCAP licensed its entire catalog as a whole, not individual pieces.

Since restaurants and clubs had been accustomed to using this music for free, ASCAP met resistance from the beginning. The venues threatened to stop musical performances altogether, which panicked the local musicians' union, which also believed it would have to pay licensing fees.

ASCAP won a few critical court victories that ensured its position, however. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that performances need not be ticketed to count as for-profit, and therefore subject to copyright law. At the end of its first year, 85 hotels were paying the Society $8.23 per week to license its catalog.

so people have been having this discussion for approx 100 years

Update on case involving pub in Providence:

www.projo.com
Patrick’s Pub in Providence fined for violating copyright laws
01:00 AM EST on Saturday, February 28, 2009
By Katie Mulvaney
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Patrick’s Pub, a favorite Smith Hill political haunt, will pay $14,000 over three years for violating federal copyright laws.
The copyright holders sued the pub and its owner, Patrick T. Griffin, last year for violating laws four times when a band played reggae legend Bob Marley’s “Is This Love,” Tom Petty’s “The Waiting,” the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” and “Ventura Highway” by Dewey Bunnell one night last February. They had sought $750 to $30,000 for each violation.
“He obviously learned his lesson in a costly fashion,” Daniel P. McKiernan, the pub owner’s lawyer, said of his client in the wake of the consent agreement reached yesterday in U.S. District Court.
Though the suit was brought by the copyright holders, it was the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers that pursued the case. A membership organization of more than 330,000 composers, songwriters and music publishers, ASCAP requires bars, restaurants, nightclubs and even stores to pay license fees to gain unlimited access to its repertoire of millions of songs. Royalties are then distributed to publishers and writers, according to ASCAP.
Griffin repeatedly rebuffed efforts to get him to enter a license agreement, according to Richard Reimer, a lawyer for ASCAP. As a result, an ASCAP investigator went to the pub and saw the performance. Griffin has said he mistook ASCAP’s pursuit of a license as a scam.
McKiernan said the pub now has a license agreement with ASCAP and all appropriate copyright organizations.
Patrick’s Pub will hold a fundraiser called Save the Music Party on Thursday to help raise money to pay for the settlement, McKiernan said.

yeah, that made the front cover of the providence journal this morning

in earlier new stories about it, the owner was portraying their music use as olden irish folk fiddlers and such. then dude gets logged one night they're playing marley, petty, the dead, etc.

so people have been having this discussion for approx 100 years

this is correct - ASCAP hasn't "started" doing anything, this is what they do. BMI too. I wish it were possible to selectively say "venue holds fewer than 100 ppl (i.e. locally owned coffee shop, they get a pass" but that'd be giving Starbucks the same pass as Joe Who Runs Java The Hut (home of the bottomless Wookie) or whatever, and really, no

yeah, when I worked for BMI I had (still have) conflicted feelings about some of the policies. for some reason this topic approaches middle east levels of intractable positioning when it comes to workable solutions. I've been involved in many "what are the acceptable exceptions" discussions and they will srsly make yr brane hurt.

Is there a union for musicians who don't care about copyright, who can use funds to defend those accused of these things. There should be.

creative commons?

check out that as220 link above, I think it talks about it

also not to get all thread pendant-ah here but ASCAP/BMI don't represent all musicians, just songwriters

They don't lend funds for cases, do they? Plus they are pretty much US based, while there are opposing groups throughout Europe (the world). (I was just wondering, I wasn't stating an opinion on this either way - it just seems like the prosecutors have the benefit of collective protection, without those defending having it).

There was meant to be a ? after 'the world'. I don't think Europe is the world.

Is this a possible reason why the three tribute bands in Seattle for The Cure, Bauhaus & New Order seemed to have dropped off in their gigs?

Bimble, let the record reflect that I think you are a lovely person for reals and so I have resisted the open goal you just gave my nostalgia-bashing pig-ornery self.

Java The Hut (home of the bottomless Wookie)

real life LOLS

this happened maybe 10 years ago to a coffeeshop a good friend of mine used to manage, her solution was to ban ASCAP discs from being played instore.

sleeve you know I bit that joke from here rite, don't wanna take credit for LOLs not rightfully mine

ha, OK, still funny.

Bruce Springsteen is showing a midtown bar who's The Boss.

The rocker slapped Connolly's Pub & Restaurant on W. 45th St. with a copyright infringement lawsuit Wednesday.

He claims the bar hosted a band on Aug. 9, 2008, that performed three of Springsteen's hits - and charged customers a cover fee.

Venues that host live performances are supposed to pay an annual licensing fee to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which doles out royalties.

Springsteen had no comment, but ASCAP officials said the point of the action was to protect all songwriters.

"It's not about him as a recording artist," said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP senior vice president for licensing. "In this instance, he's simply a songwriter with rights."

The band, which was not identified, allegedly played three songs that night: "Growin' Up," "Because the Night" and "You're No Good," which was written by Clinton Ballard Jr., a co-plaintiff in the case.

Connolly's, which did not return calls for comment, could face a $30,000 fine for skipping out on what would have been a $2,700 licensing fee, Candilora said.

He said the suit was aimed at leveling the playing field for other bars in New York that do pay the licensing fee, which is based on occupancy.

"We had been after them (Connolly's) for complying for over two years, so it's not so much about who or where," Candilora said.

"Why should those places that are complying with the law be at a competitive disadvantage?" he said.

Joe Cumia plays guitar in the band 2U, a U2 tribute band that has rocked out at Connolly's many times.

"I think any venue that makes money from live music should be paying the artist in one way or another," he said.

But he said he also thinks a lawsuit might not be the best way to make that happen.

"It's absurd for him (Springsteen) to go after a little pub when he's selling records and making dough," Cumia said.

"Bruce doesn't need the $8 a month that he'd get from this band playing at Connolly's."

Nothing Compares 2U

HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

- Woody Guthrie

http://www.shorefire.com/index.php?a=pressrelease&o=3650

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 4, 2010

Statement

In regards to the ASCAP lawsuit against Connolly's Pub and Restaurant,
ASCAP was solely responsible for naming Bruce Springsteen as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Bruce Springsteen had no knowledge of this lawsuit, was not asked if he would participate as a named plaintiff, and would not have agreed to do so if he had been asked. Upon learning of this lawsuit this morning, Bruce Springsteen's representatives demanded the immediate removal of his name from the lawsuit.

anonymous takes down BMI site, apparently they don't know about ASCAP and SESAC

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-carnes/anonymous-attacks-songwri_b_834331.html

unless they're saving them for later

what was originally described ITT was terrible and an example of the music industry whores crushing the little guy but I do kinda wish somebody would whisk off all of the people that play acoustic guitar in restaurants because I can't enjoy my monte cristo sandwich if I have to hear somebody doing Doobie Brothers covers with a shitty acoustic and one of those programmable amps that plays drums and bass and shit

The Potbelly next to work stopped having those guys set up at lunch thank god.

i always want to wait for one to flub a chord progression so I can scream out the right chord

"THAT'S Am7/C, you moron!!!"

my high school choir teacher used to come to a restaurant I worked at and we had stayed in touch and we had this one singer/guitar player that came every week and she wrinkled her nose and said "if I knew that guy would be playing I'd have stayed home"