Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Yep. As long as it's above board and complies with the PRO requests I'm for it!
Me too. I'm thinking that if this is the new reality of the internet, then then PROs need to modernize and figure out a way to license these "small players" fairly.

For musicians who play in a small niche and will never be Beyonce, etc. these smaller outlets are important. You can't just say that they're too small and need to go raise capital and move out of mom's basement. I mean you CAN, but the problem is that a lot of genres that aren't pop need these small time people at the early stages. Perhaps the PROs need to adapt to this new reality, or maybe only the megastars are worth their time?
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

But if the PROs give tiny licenses the distribution will be even smaller. At some point the cash to artists would be so small it becomes essentially vanity distribution. That holds no interest to me. I work hard and want to be paid well for it. It's not too much to ask. Again, if one cannot afford to be a broadcaster they should stay out of it. I'm not a fan of www "free" or "cheap" distribution of music and other intellectual property.

Aldo consider this. If they are successful (and I wish them well) they could make big bucks thru ads and other revenue streams. Are they going to revise your license to reflect that and increase profits to you and if so, what mechanism will be in place to allow you to audit that?
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Aldo consider this. If they are successful (and I wish them well) they could make big bucks thru ads and other revenue streams. Are they going to revise your license to reflect that and increase profits to you and if so, what mechanism will be in place to allow you to audit that?
I do not know... but it's too bad something isn't in place. Otherwise, if the PROs have no intention to license small players, and you're in a small niche genre, you're relegated to the gutter and refusing to sign the agreement I mentioned is entirely symbolic. You almost make the case for me to go ahead and sign it.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

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Whatever you do, make sure you are not violating your agreement with ASCAP.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Aldo consider this. If they are successful (and I wish them well) they could make big bucks thru ads and other revenue streams. Are they going to revise your license to reflect that and increase profits to you and if so, what mechanism will be in place to allow you to audit that?
The more I think about this, there must be some technological way to solve this issue. Even with small time operators. What about ASCAP or BMI having servers and members place their music on the server and then provide these small stations with a link or method to stream from the PRO's server? To offset the cost, perhaps if the song streams less than a minimum number of times, the member has to pay a fee for the song to be on the server.

I know there's also technology for computers to monitor internet radio streams and indentify a song by its sonic fingerprint. I think they may use this already. Maybe charge the small time internet stations a fee to be monitored by the PRO and then charge a per song royalty?

That might not address the issue of how you can tell if a station is becoming bigger and perhaps profitable, but there are brilliant minds out there and I think they need to turn their attention to this. Unless of course, PROs only exist for the elites and smaller indy musicians are wise to forget about them and sign these agreements. In which case, perhaps the biggest mistake of a indy musician is joining a PRO *too early* in their career, so they can engage in this giveway until they, if ever, reach critical mass.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

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MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Whatever you do, make sure you are not violating your agreement with ASCAP.
Well right. See the post I just made. Seems that perhaps the mistake might be joining the PRO too early, thus being able to be penalized for doing so. I'm against signing these things on principle, but I'd be happier knowing the PROs are interested in devising a way for these small operators to be above board.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

Well I just did some sniffing around. ASCAP has a new "Play Music" license for websites and mobile apps. Here's the page:

http://www.ascap.com/licensing/types/web-mobile.aspx

If you have less than 30,000 user visits per month and less than $2,000 per month in revenue and can pay by MC/VISA you go here:

https://www.ascap.com/mylicense/newmedi ... ation.aspx

... were you are told you qualify for ASCAP's low-cost "Play Music" license. Only problem is I can't see how much that costs unless I fill out the form. I'd think I'd want to know beforehand.

Personally, if it were cheap enough, I'd email this guy running the station and offer to pay all of some of his license fee in order to help "train" more people to be legit.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

Found another link:

http://www.tuaw.com/2013/02/05/ascap-an ... evelopers/

Looks like it's $240/month. Hobby or not, if someone is serious, they can cough up $20/mo. Of course they'd have to pay BMI. I'm not rolling in dough, but if I were, I'd be tempted to send this guy $240 and open him up to take ASCAP artists.

Perhaps, smaller indy artists that are part of ASCAP and NEED the promotion that these smaller outlets provide could form a fund to help subsidize the license fees of these "little guys." $240/year only covers him for ASCAP. He'd have to also cover BMI. But between those too and unaffiliated artists, I think you'd be pretty well covered.

Let's assume BMI charges the same. Round numbers that's $500 for your hobby. But hey... how much did the guy spend on his computer for the station, or the microphone. How much do musicians spend on their guitars? If someone wants to launch an internet radio station, and it's a hobby, that's just an expense of engaging in your hobby.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by mikehalloran »

The second that one of these web sites offers a click-through or an ad, it is a business. A business does not have to be profitable but that is the goal of most.

The internet is not HAM radio where those guys spend a lot of money on their hobby.

I am suspect of so called hobbyists who don't want to pay the associated costs. Businesses who want to save every penny they can and fly under the radar, that I can understand.

Remember that SoundExchange is how the artists get paid - a requirement of internet radio since 2007 when the US decided to join the rest of the Berne Convention.

The big promise of the internet is that you can have access to anything you want. The big lie is that it should be free.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

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mikehalloran wrote:The second that one of these web sites offers a click-through or an ad, it is a business. A business does not have to be profitable but that is the goal of most.

The internet is not HAM radio where those guys spend a lot of money on their hobby.

I am suspect of so called hobbyists who don't want to pay the associated costs. Businesses who want to save every penny they can and fly under the radar, that I can understand.

Remember that SoundExchange is how the artists get paid - a requirement of internet radio since 2007 when the US decided to join the rest of the Berne Convention.

The big promise of the internet is that you can have access to anything you want. The big lie is that it should be free.
I was hoping you'd chime in, Mike. That's sort of how I feel about it. I don't know if this guy has click through ads... I can't remember. Like most of these "stations" it's a hobbyist sort of thing. Even still, most musicians spend a LOT of money on their "hobby". I have a very visceral uneasiness about what he's trying to do with this agreement.

Can you perhaps shed light on what Michael suggested? If an ASCAP member signed such an agreement, would he be violating conditions of his/her membership with ASCAP? If not by letter of the law, it feels like they would be in spirit.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

I can answer one aspect for sure. Once you sign off on a work, the PRO can't represent you on that work so let's hope it never becomes a hot or is used in a movie or TV show. Kind of counter to what one ultimately hopes for.

NEVER underestimate the value of intellectual property licensing. Never give it away for cheap! NEVER!
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

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MIDI Life Crisis wrote:I can answer one aspect for sure. Once you sign off on a work, the PRO can't represent you on that work so let's hope it never becomes a hot or is used in a movie or TV show. Kind of counter to what one ultimately hopes for.

NEVER underestimate the value of intellectual property licensing. Never give it away for cheap! NEVER!
Hmmm... THAT is very interesting. The agreement they present says it's for the term of one year. When it expires, ASCAP couldn't represent you after that on that work? Seems like it would hamper ASCAP from doing their job if there were all these author-negotiated exemption agreements floating around out there.

I like the idea that signing something like this would prevent ASCAP from being able to representing you on that work/song in the future. It would be the ammunition needed to convince artists NOT to sign those agreements.
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Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Perhaps a limited agreement might not be as bad. I can tell you I signed a sub publishing agreement on a project in Europe and BMI was unable to force the sub publisher from collecting when the agreement was cancelled by me. To this date the Italian sub publisher has not distributed the money to me and BMI has not been able to collect it. We're talking 10s of thousands of euros! To their credit, BMI took the money out if their own pocket a few years ago to make me happy.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by James Steele »

Yep... it's not an agreement in perpetuity or anything like that. Automatically expires in a year I believe unless renewed. I'm still quite ambivalent about it. It's nice to get "promotion"... to a point. I would not want to jeopardize my ASCAP membership. Perhaps a shorter term of 6 months or something... dunno. I'm viscerally against it.
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Re: Internet Radio Station wants me to sign an agreement

Post by dosuna11 »

After reading this I went and listened to "Nights in White Satin." Good call on looking at the big picture for all musicians James. The whole industry is in such flux. Saw the Muscle Shoals DVD last night. Great to see. As I remember At $0.25/unit sold a gold record would get you $125,000 having your own masters. Here is the list from spotfly's top 10. It is apparent who is making the $ streaming.

Some back-of-the-napkin math using Spotify’s listenership data and these royalty figures provides a sense for how much money the hottest songs in music are making for artists and labels right now. Here are the 10 most popular songs on Spotify the week before Thanksgiving, with an estimate of how much money they’ve generated in royalties since they were released:

1. The Monster / Eminem / 35.1 million streams / $210,000 – $294,000

2. Timber / Pitbull / 32.0 million streams / $192,000 – $269,000

3. Lorde / Royals / 65.3 million streams / $392,000 – $549,000

4. OneRepublic / Counting Stars / 57.7 million streams / $346,000 – $484,000

5. Avicii / Hey Brother / 46.5 million streams / $279,000 – $391,000

6. Miley Cyrus / Wrecking Ball / 60.4 million streams / $363,000 – $508,000

7. Katy Perry / Roar / 64.6 million streams / $388,000 – $543,000

8. Avicii / Wake Me Up / 152.1 million streams / $913,000 – $1.3 million

9. Drake / Hold On, We’re Going Home /47.1 million streams / $283,000 – $396,000

10. Ellie Goulding / Burn / 53.8 million streams / $323,000 – $452,000

Note that these are the total royalty payments split between record labels, music publishers, songwriters and artists. It’s not clear exactly how much money goes to artists, but in older distribution formats, like CDs and iTunes downloads, artists often pocketed less than 10 percent of the retail price.

The picture is obviously not as rosy as these numbers would indicate for smaller acts. Spotify says a band with a “niche indie album” generated $3,300 in royalty payments in July, while a classic rock album earned $17,000.

The disclosures may help Spotify convince more acts to put their music on the service. But the company, which is not profitable, faces an ever-growing number of music streaming competitors, soon to include YouTube. Spotify may generate big dollars for artists one day, but it will have to convince a fractured listening audience that its platform is worth paying for.
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