Discovery Corners Composers in Music Royalties Battle

[HCMarkus]

How about a boycott? All ASCAP and BMI composers and publishers exclude these networks and steaming services from using ANY of their music? No more Star Wars, Hobbits, shoot ‘em ups. Nada! IOW: no content for you. They cannot replace scores on anything except what they control the rights to.

End of story.

I like that idea MLC. But do the composers/publishers have that power per their contracts? I don't think so... It would require that each feature's controlling party take the stand for composers. That said, if more than a few blockbusters were withheld, progress could almost certainly be made.

[mikehalloran]

How about a boycott? All ASCAP … composers and publishers exclude these networks and steaming services from using ANY of their music?

It's been done before.

The big ASCAP radio strike on the 1930s resulted in a renewed popularity of classical and folk music. When Home on the Range was ruled to be in the public domain, it became the most popular song in the country.

The broadcasters then rounded up everyone they could who wasn't ASCAP and used them to break the strike "for the publicity" in lieu of $ (sound familiar?). It worked, too. At the same time, an antitrust suit was filed by the DOJ, also successful, but...

Then the broadcasters petitioned the court to dissolve ASCAP so they wouldn't have to pay anyone anything and that was their big mistake. The court told them they had to pay those songwriters, too. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and that was how/why BMI was formed with the resulting consent decrees in 1939.

The Society of European Stage Authors and Composers quickly changed to be more like the other two and pointed out that they'd been around since 1930. That's how SESAC gained their seat at the table.

At some point, someone is going to remember all this.

[mhschmieder]

Wow, nice summary, making it much easier to remember the details of importance.

When and why did SESAC become a closed shop? I didn't join in time (though I think they still send invites as they wish). They were recommended to me in the early 2000's; I am indirectly part of BMI but not yet as an individual composer.

[mikehalloran]

Wow, nice summary, making it much easier to remember the details of importance.

When and why did SESAC become a closed shop? I didn't join in time (though I think they still send invites as they wish). They were recommended to me in the early 2000's; I am indirectly part of BMI but not yet as an individual composer.

Unlike ASCAP (not for profit society owned by its members) and BMI (non-profit corp. owned by the broadcasters), SESAC is a for profit company. As such, it has changed ownership many times including twice in the last ten years. They bought the Harry Fox Agency in 2015 and Blackstone bought SESAC in 2017 but I forget from whom. Speaking of which, this is sort of on topic.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/busi ... -harry-fox

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Just as long as they send me my ferducking royalties, I don't care who owns whom. lol

[mhschmieder]

The Billboard article is blocked to non-subscribers, but a bit of it showed up; enough to trigger my memory of when that was published last year. I had simply forgotten about it.

I suppose I now have no regrets over having continued to procrastinate on officially registering myself and my stuff vs. only having the most basic copyright protection for my solo material and still having not officially released public versions of any of it, as it seems that now I will once again have to completely review the strategy anyway and especially in terms of picking ASCAP or BMI etc.