The venue pays a license fee to play music. Not entirely sure how they work out how to distribute the pay though. Lot easier with streaming but with physical media and music on USBs I'm guessing they just use the sales data on music and split up the licensing assuming what's being sold roughly matches what's being played.
> Not entirely sure how they work out how to distribute the pay though.
They don't.
Your money goes into a pot of money that also includes every radio, every TV channel, every song used in an ad etc. Every month (or year), your local music association (there's one in every country) sums up the play counts and redistributes the pot accordingly.
This is all to say that the only people that actually get paid from this pot of money are either gonna be domestic musicians or global top 40. Even if your tracks are super famous in clubs and every DJ that plays it accurately reports that, it's still very unlikely you're gonna make the payment cut. Even a relatively minor hit on the radio is valued more than a super-popular song in clubs because it is guaranteed to have a higher play count.
No that’s not a law. Typically when DJing the venue is responsible for paying the ASCAP and other licensing fees. As long as the DJ didn’t pirate the music they are free to use whatever source of the music they want.
The fun part is paying ASCAP and BMI doesn’t guarantee you have the rights to play any song, just most songs. So you’d have to look up if the song you want to play is in the ASCAP library before you play every song. And if they don’t have the song you must contact the artist/label and get permission before playing it. Obviously this isn’t practical. But it illustrates just how difficult it is to be compliant with copyright law.
There are many rights involved and I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the venue pays ASCAP and BMI for performance rights, which covers the mechanical and songwriting royalties no matter how the DJ gets them. This new feature fills in a licensing gap with respect to the license that Apple Music extends to the DJ.
Gigachad|11 months ago
input_sh|11 months ago
They don't.
Your money goes into a pot of money that also includes every radio, every TV channel, every song used in an ad etc. Every month (or year), your local music association (there's one in every country) sums up the play counts and redistributes the pot accordingly.
This is all to say that the only people that actually get paid from this pot of money are either gonna be domestic musicians or global top 40. Even if your tracks are super famous in clubs and every DJ that plays it accurately reports that, it's still very unlikely you're gonna make the payment cut. Even a relatively minor hit on the radio is valued more than a super-popular song in clubs because it is guaranteed to have a higher play count.
guyfromfargo|11 months ago
The fun part is paying ASCAP and BMI doesn’t guarantee you have the rights to play any song, just most songs. So you’d have to look up if the song you want to play is in the ASCAP library before you play every song. And if they don’t have the song you must contact the artist/label and get permission before playing it. Obviously this isn’t practical. But it illustrates just how difficult it is to be compliant with copyright law.
dcrazy|11 months ago