Karaoke Forums

I have to love some people's rationalization. Just because karaoke, movieoke, or anything else is mentioned by name, they think it's not included. People the important words here are REPRODUCTION and PUBLIC PERFORMANCE. It matters not whether the reproduction is on paper (sheet music), audio (CDG, CD, LP, 45, 78, or any new item out there that can reproduce a work) or the performance is in front of one person or 100,000, a public performance is a public performance other than those exempted by the applicable acts or legislation.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Okay guys let me expand my point. This is only US law and it was about ten years ago that I was madly pursuing this but that being said....

Did you miss the part about what the song writer is entitled to? He/she/they/it is entitled to the net profit made by the establishment over and above what they would have made if the song were not played. No performer is advertised, no song is advertised, people cannot be there for the sake of the music.

People come to karaoke to bellow into a microphone accompanied by some unspecified background noise. That is the draw of karaoke. Not performance, performing. It's not public performance it's singing practice in public. Most of the folks are not very good and have been drinking. Does it really matter which song they sing?

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Okay, who took my pants?

ASCAP?....sounds like a good name for underwear......

Dude . . . you've been taste testing too much of your crop. In essence you just said "It's not public performance it's just singing to accompaniment in public."

Singing in public to accompaniment is a performance! According to the US Copyright Act, a performance is considered "public" when the work is performed in a "place open to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances are gathered." A performance is also considered to be public if it is transmitted to multiple locations, such as through television and radio.

Note well that it doesn't matter if it's a BAD performance. There's plenty of crappy cover bands as well as crappy karaoke.

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Dave's not here.

Weed, it seems to me the court has already decided karaoke IS a public performance and how much money can be given to the songwriters based off existing verdicts for ASCAP against bars with karaoke. I don't know whether any attorney has actually made the specific arguments you are making, but I do know most judges are loath to overturn precedent without some very strong and compelling legal reasoning to do so.

Maybe some bar owner with a whole lot of money could try your argument, but frankly I think it's a money losing proposition even if by some chance they did win the case and what about the poor song writer?

Nobody knows who the hell they are unless they perform the song themselves. Nowadays the artists get greedy and want a song writing credit as well even though they didn't do a damn thing, just so they can steal half the song writing royalties from the song writer, but if the song writer doesn't give in, then the hot shot artist won't record their song and he's got nothing.

I do think things need streamlined, modified and better explained with these licensing agencies. BMI in particular strikes me as much more heavy handed than they need to be with the bar owners, but the last thing I want to see is a bunch of cheap bar owners making money off the song writer's music and him getting nothing for his troubles. That would be totally unfair and eventually nobody would write anything for great singers, they'd just perform it themselves so as to actually at least get paid something on downloads if nothing else.

Dude... Read your signature!

<snork> Ouch! ! Well . . . weedy knows I don't think he's an idiot then . . .

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Dave's not here.

Ascap takes in fees from bars/other venues. The venue is responsible some try to pass the cost on to the KJ and I know that sometimes causes conflict.


As for original music you are probably out of luck if you are an artist. ASCAP determines the share of the royalty to be given to each artist based on radio play on 2,500 large radio stations. So unless you are getting some radio play by major radio stations that report to ASCAP you are probably out of luck as an artist in terms of getting money from ASCAP for your songs.

Only a tiny portion of the artists that write their own songs get much Radio play except on College or Indie radio stations, which are often too small to be noticed by ASCAP.