DSO, Deadon and royalties?

[Cmnaround]

So how does this work when dark star orchestra - or the dude from Deadon playing the American beauty stuff at the best buy in times square - sell major tickets and get paid playing dead music? Have they cut a deal w the dead to play for pay - and do the dead get royalties? Or is just a free for all and lawyers aren't sending nastygrams to stop playing copyrighted material for compensation? Just sayin - and a little curious -

Thanks for any insight

[RiverRat]

All venues that play music, whether recorded or live, are supposed to obtain a Performance Rights license from ASCAP, BMI and/or SESAC.

The bulk of the Dead's catalog is covered by ASCAP:

ASCAP Grateful Dead Catalog

[mmuller]

Good Q. Royalties are paid to BMI and/or ASCAP per show. Not sure about DSO. I'd imagine they do though. Your corner bar that plays music, live or not, pays anually to BMI/ASCAP.

Marc the Dead On dude.

[JonnyBoy]

So they are paid per show unlike bars, that is interesting, I guess it doesn't apply to original music? Do you pay the same if you do one cover or twenty? I guess It is the American way to have a few organizations with their hands out demanding to be paid when big money is generated.

[vwjodyme]

I read an article recently where small bars and coffe shop type places where really getting hit hard by collectors being sent out by the industry. the small places weren't making a lot of money and couldn't afford to pay the fees, plus some refused to pay because they said they just had a guy come in with an acoustic and play originals in the corner. I think it ended up that they had to be able to prove that only originals were being played...which most weren't able to do.

[tcsned]

I read an article recently where small bars and coffe shop type places where really getting hit hard by collectors being sent out by the industry. the small places weren't making a lot of money and couldn't afford to pay the fees, plus some refused to pay because they said they just had a guy come in with an acoustic and play originals in the corner. I think it ended up that they had to be able to prove that only originals were being played...which most weren't able to do.

That seems a bit legally backwards - having to prove innocence is not something anyone should have to do in any legal matter as it is next to impossible to do in most cases. Not that these industry folks are using sound legal ground to push club owners around. I remember a funny scene at a local bar where the club owner was trying to make a case that he should be sending the $$ to the actual artist and that to this corporation, called him a leach and such but didn't work out so well. I am all for artists and the owners of copyrighted material getting paid when a club owner makes money and as part of that is either live music playing the songs of recording artists but these reps are a little more hardcore than they need to be and there doesn't seem to be any relation to the money paid in fees and the actual money earned in profit. I don't have any idea how much these "fees" are though and they might actually be reasonable. We made ok money when we were gigging regularly but nowhere near what the DSO guys are bringing in so I' m sure we never wound up on anyone's radar. When it comes down to it the music industry is in trouble for the big companies because file sharing and such has really cut into their profits and they were slow to get on the online music scene and got blown away by the anarchist/free music scene and have yet to find a way to either stop or leverage it other than what iTunes and others are doing. It makes sense from an artist's point of view is to take on more of a GD point of view and make money playing live. Use recorded music as an advertising tool to get people to come to live shows. That seems a more appropriate model for this era.

[vwjodyme]

here is an older article, but it is similar to the one i read and has some price points

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8892/coffe ... shakedown/

[jahozer]

when I used to work in and play music in bars, the ascap guys would come in a few times a year. Sometimes they would sit and listen for a while, other times they would announce that who they were. Most bar owners want to cut cost as much as possible and a good amount will try to get by without paying the royalty fees.
Rarely have I heard of them coming down on the band unless they were actually profiting from the act, such as a cut from the ticket sales. Bars have, however, tried to pass the charge on to the bands.
Yeah, they take their cut, but they do ensure that the songwriters get paid.

[vwjodyme]

found a couple more articles and it looks like the price points range from $400 for cafe's offering free music to $10k for larger venues.

on the originals vs copyrighted stuff this is a snippet i found in one article

Bruce Schrader, who owns the Sacred Grounds Coffee House, tried to keep his open mics going by having his performers sign waivers stating they were playing only their original songs. Nevertheless, he was faced with demands for $6,000 in license fees from the agencies and had to shut down the weekly event last year.

"Their argument," Mr. Schrader said, "was that I couldn't possibly know whether the performers were singing any of the millions of copyrighted songs they represent, so I'd better get a license if I didn't want to get sued."
By Tim Holt, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor / January 9, 2009

[Cmnaround]

Very interesting - thanks for the insight. The recent abbey road stuff got me thinking about this and I was wondering if they had to go through any hoops before being able to play that on tour - or if it didn't matter from an industry perspective. The DSO is also pretty obvious because they are playing big shows - last summer at some of the same festivals as Furthur - so just curious as to how they work that arrangement. Small acts are way under the radar so I just assumed that doesn't even count - but I just learned something new about the fees that bars and clubs have to pay. The Dead On is a really cool idea - nice that you were able to get that into such a cool venue - so you are able to do that kind of show without having to get pemission from the band first, but just by covering the royalties according to however the rules are set up? Very cool to learn about how this works.