PRS's Latest Trick: Demanding Money From Shop Assistant Who Was Singing At Work

from the performance-fees dept

Sometimes, these collection societies write the jokes themselves, it seems. PRS, the music collection society in the UK, famous for going way over the line in demanding money from people (remember the time it demanded a woman pay up for playing music for her horses? Or how it calls small businesses and if they hear any music in the background, demand payment?), has done it again. It threatened a shop assistant for singing out loud (public performance!) while stacking the grocery shelves, demanding she pay £1,000 for the privilege. Of course, why was she singing? Because PRS had already threatened the owner for having a radio -- so he got rid of the radio.

Of course, as with the horse debacle, once PRS realized the PR nightmare it had created for itself, it apologized (and sent some flowers). But, that hardly makes the situation better. Why is PRS demanding such things in the first place? Given the long trail of similar examples, this isn't just some random one-off accident. It's basically how PRS operates. And that's because it's structured its business so that its "investigators" aren't really "investigators" at all, but sales people. They have every incentive to get as many companies to pay up as possible, no matter if there's any real performance at issue.

On top of that, the very fact that PRS forced this shopowner to take away his radio should show how backwards and braindead PRS's strategy is. The radio in the shop isn't a "public performance." It's not the reason people go to the shop. But it did help promote the musicians PRS supposedly represents. Not any more. Musicians in the UK should be furious at PRS for making it more difficult to get their music heard, let alone for threatening someone for singing while stocking the shelves.

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How Come SoundExchange Is Holding Onto Over $100 Million?

from the questions,-questions,-questions dept

We've talked about the ridiculousness of the various music collections societies being involved in the discussions on new music business models. To them, the answer is always the same: add another license and let us collect it. They're middlemen and they take in tons of money and would only be all too happy to take in more. Some got upset with us in the comments, by noting that some of these collections societies are non-profits. In fact, the new Choruss offering, which we've already explained why it's a bad idea that's more of a bait-and-switch than anything useful, has been described as a similar "non-profit" collections group.

But, as we've noted in the past, supposedly nonprofit collections groups such as SoundExchange (a spinoff of the RIAA) are notorious for not finding artists to pay -- even some of the biggest names in the business. Oh, and did we mention that if the royalties go "unclaimed" the recording industry (via SoundExchange) often gets to keep the money? Given that bit of info, it's perhaps no surprise at all that P2Pnet is noticing that SoundExchange's own tax returns note that the nonprofit was sitting on over $100 million at the end of 2007, a pretty significant leap over previous years, and a somewhat startling sum for a supposed "nonprofit" in charge of both collecting and distributing funds.

It seems like those musicians sure are difficult to find.

The P2Pnet report also points out that it will be interesting to see how much SoundExchange has spent on lobbying efforts. SoundExchange is actually barred from lobbying the government, but has been ignoring that for years by funding musicFIRST, a recording industry lobbying group that's trying to add a new license for radio stations to pay (collected by SoundExchange, of course) by claiming that radio is actually a form of piracy.

So, even if Choruss or these other collections societies seem to be designed with the best intentions in mind (and I'm sure they are), it seems that they're wide open to abuse -- which is yet another reason to be quite worried about simply handing over the entire industry's business model to such an operation.

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How ASCAP And BMI Are Harming Up-And-Coming Singers

from the shakedown dept

When we talk about problems with copyright and royalty systems, sometimes people suggest that we should make an exception for the collections societies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC that get performance royalties for songwriters, saying that since the money goes to the songwriters, rather than the labels, it's okay. However, ASCAP and the others cause significant problems. We've already discussed how they create problems, and how their views are outdated and damaging for songwriters.

However, it keeps getting worse, as they get more and more desperate to collect money -- and they're doing so in a way that harms songwriters much more than helps them.

ASCAP and BMI have been aggressively targeting venues that hold open mic nights, and demanding they pay huge fees. Many venues have given up and simply stopped allowing any musicians to play at all. In fact, one made every musician sign a waiver that they would only play original songs, and ASCAP told him it didn't matter because there was no way to know if the singers were really avoiding copyrighted music, so he still needed to pay up for a license. Those that pay up then often feel they need to charge a cover fee, so attendance dwindles.

It's basically making it more difficult for the next generation of musicians to get started, and ASCAP is so blind to this they don't even know what they're talking about. In response to the article, an ASCAP representative claims:

"What gives anyone the right to use someone else's property, even though they're not making money on it? I can guarantee you the phone company's going to charge you whether you're making money or not."

First off, this shows an ignorance of what is and is not "property." It also shows no concept of the larger picture of how using copyright to limit singers from appearing is harming artists. As for the non sequitur about the phone company... it's not clear what that has to do with anything.

It's time for musicians to start realizing that these societies do not have the songwriters' best interests in mind.

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