Thursday, July 03, 2003
Copyright licenses
Just like bars, retail shops, sporting events and concerts, the local government has to pay for the use of publihsed music, When I tried to explain this to people here at the City of Grand Rapids thier first response was
"We don't use any copyright music".
"What about music on hold?" I said.
Then they realized that use of published music is in many ways in widespread use in many things we do. From the music played during the open skating at the Community Ice Rink to the Ethinic festival on Calder square.
About a year ago we were approaced by ASCAP to purchase a license to cover most things we do with this publihsed music. This license had many exclusions, such as events which gross over $25,000 and televison production syncroization, but it did include the playing of recorded music at free evenets and such things as "Music on Hold"
This License cost the City about $1,300. per year, wich we promptly paid.
This week SESAC, the second largest behind ASCAP, sent us a letter offereing a license for $1,300. It is probably a matter of time before BMI does the same.
Rather than recommending we go with these two additional licenses. I am recommending that we just purchase the one ASCAP license and pursue a policy of not using any SESAC and BMI published music. I don't know if this will work. How do you tell a band to only play ASCAP Music. Hopefully, they will not send inspectors into the field to spy on us.
How does this relate to Cable Televison? Well, for our cable channel we have pursued a policy of not useing any copyright music. We use sofware packages such as Sonic Foundry's ACID to produce our own Music or we use BUY OUT Library Music for which the copyrigths we have purchased. While this practice increases our produciton time per program, it does give us a unique sound and Identy.
Just like bars, retail shops, sporting events and concerts, the local government has to pay for the use of publihsed music, When I tried to explain this to people here at the City of Grand Rapids thier first response was
"We don't use any copyright music".
"What about music on hold?" I said.
Then they realized that use of published music is in many ways in widespread use in many things we do. From the music played during the open skating at the Community Ice Rink to the Ethinic festival on Calder square.
About a year ago we were approaced by ASCAP to purchase a license to cover most things we do with this publihsed music. This license had many exclusions, such as events which gross over $25,000 and televison production syncroization, but it did include the playing of recorded music at free evenets and such things as "Music on Hold"
This License cost the City about $1,300. per year, wich we promptly paid.
This week SESAC, the second largest behind ASCAP, sent us a letter offereing a license for $1,300. It is probably a matter of time before BMI does the same.
Rather than recommending we go with these two additional licenses. I am recommending that we just purchase the one ASCAP license and pursue a policy of not using any SESAC and BMI published music. I don't know if this will work. How do you tell a band to only play ASCAP Music. Hopefully, they will not send inspectors into the field to spy on us.
How does this relate to Cable Televison? Well, for our cable channel we have pursued a policy of not useing any copyright music. We use sofware packages such as Sonic Foundry's ACID to produce our own Music or we use BUY OUT Library Music for which the copyrigths we have purchased. While this practice increases our produciton time per program, it does give us a unique sound and Identy.
