So recently I found out that throughout Europe royalties for a song are paid not just to songwriters & publishers, but also to individual performers & producers when a song is played on the radio or television (performers & producers don’t get a cut in the USA). I’m torn on how I feel about that. I think on the one hand it increases the value of musical performances, but on the other hand it de-emphasizes the importance of writing. I mean, should session musicians get paid more than the band who tours & makes the song popular? If you’re going to say everyone who goes into making a song a hit that gets played on the radio for fifty years (especially as sales dwindle), should label owners & managers & publicity folks also get paid? What about the mixing engineer & the mastering engineer? It’s weird when you think about all the people involved in a record & who should really get to collect money the rest of their life for a piece of art. Maybe it’s an american thing or thinking of myself predominantly as a songwriter, but it seems to me like the songwriters are the ones who should make the money – that they are the artists & the rest of the folks are just hired hands. I don’t know, intellectual property laws have gotten pretty screwy as far as corporations being considered copyright owners & so copyright goes on forever & nothing ever falls into fair use. I’m starting to lean towards 50 years after authorship as a situation that would be more than fair.
Jon DeRosa has an interview up on Evening of Light. They also have up a little retrospective where you can listen to some music from throughout Jon’s career.
I got to see the rough edit of the mead documentary & I think I might need to start shaving my head even closer to the scalp than I currently do. Which I suppose will make me look even more like Walter White (Breaking Bad). I just need to get some glasses.
I realize that a lot of folks who read this blog don’t regularly watch TV, so I thought I’d share this Geico ad that I dig lately.
isn’t this what BMILive does now? well maybe not producers but for performers.
I still can’t figure that part out if they’re only collecting when you play your own songs or if say our drummer plays the show does she get paid as well eventhough it’s not a song she has writing credits on.
I’m pretty sure the money goes to the songwriters/publishers with BMILive. I never signed up for it because I really haven’t been playing shows since they have it. How much do you get for a show? $5 extra or less?
You know what’s funny is I remember needing to fill out all this paperwork on one of my Euro tours with my setlist & BMI info for every show & I never got money back from it.
i’ve only been paid for one show thus far but got approx. 1.30-1.60 per song per show.
Time to shorten the songs & play more of them!
or register the choruses as separate songs and also include more choruses.
If a song has two parts it should be two songs. I’m a firm believer in that.
as is well documented in your catalog