ASCAP Can Cripple Small Venues

As Best himself recently put it on the popular Denton Rock City message board, "I am an ASCAP member. This means that I should collect money, based upon their system of the tracking of 'use' proportional to said 'use' of my music. Problem is, their bullshit system is the biggest one-sided bell curve you've ever seen...In the end, I, or anyone else 'represented' by ASCAP make no money proportional to what I sell or what of mine is used unless or until I'm as big as Mariah Carey or who-the-fuck-ever. In fact, all those publishing songwriters affiliated with ASCAP who aren't on that monetary level actually make money for those who are. If I go from selling 10,000 albums a year to 40,000, along with the predictable increase in 'use' (such as jukebox plays and the like), I will never see a proportional increase in royalty payout from ASCAP. Instead, the extra money I earn, along with the thousands of other artists on the lower rungs earning progressively more, will go the top 2 or 3 percent of ASCAP artists already earning millions a year from their vapid shit." (The fact that Candilora mentioned favored Celine Dion songwriter and schlockmeister Diane Warren while conversing on the subject kinda sorta almost confirms this, in my mind at least.)

Considering Denton artists near and dear to his heart are also getting short shrift, it's no wonder Baish doesn't want to comply. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have much of a legal leg to stand on. In fact, it's a wonder anyone wants to open a club these days, given the hassles.

Sure, the ASCAP representative I talked to was polite and forthcoming. But I also got a slight whiff of the strong-arm tactics employed by the company, whose representatives are probably somewhat less cordial when chatting up your average club owner. "You know, it's not like this is [big] dollars," says Candilora, senior vice president of licensing for the organization. "And when they look at what the possible damages are under the copyright law, it's just stupid for them not to take a license and do it the right way.

"There are places who said to us, 'Look, we just do new material. We have them sign a form when they perform here that they're only gonna play their own material and that they're giving us the performance right.' And I said that's fine. But if one of the licensing reps hears them play 'The Gambler,' and it isn't Don Schlitz standing up there, that's infringement of copyright. And quite frankly, since you have gone through the effort of doing this, it clearly tells us that this isn't an ignorant performer. You know what the law is, and you've got a willful infringement." In other words, you might end up owing ASCAP up to $150,000, if you make it to court without surrendering.

"Do you know those folks there [at Rubber Gloves]?" says Candilora. "If you do, you'd be doing them a favor if you told them that we're down to our very last resort with them...it's going on five years. That's a long time to be ignoring the law. Like I said, it's a last resort that we sue people. I'd say the clock has ticked pretty well here."