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Cover Band Rules
- Thread starter MrBruce
- Start date
In the USA the venue has to pay, not the band.
Surprise, lots of venues don't bother to pay a penny.
Surprise, lots of venues don't bother to pay a penny.
Yeah the venue is supposed to have a BMI (or similar) membership and pay fees.
Some songs are not bound by those regulations. We used to play for a club owner who refused to pay. He had a lost on the back of the house PA speakers of songs we couldn't play.
Some songs are not bound by those regulations. We used to play for a club owner who refused to pay. He had a lost on the back of the house PA speakers of songs we couldn't play.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
No, bands do not have to pay to perform other folks' songs. Here's how it works in the US:
Music Licensing for Bars and Restaurants: What You Need to Know
Music Licensing for Bars and Restaurants: What You Need to Know
I'm gonna put it out there, I'd be blown away if 10% of live music club-sized venues pay a cent for licensing of live music. For (recorded) house music it's probably closer to 25%.
It gets worse. Some festival organizers will try to get bands to sign for having the performance rights, when it's actually their responsibility.
Considering how aggressive the music-rights groups are with enforcing their licenses, I'd guess it is significantly more than those numbers.
I know in Australia you send/provide a set list to the venue/promoter and any covers on there are paid through APRA by the venue/promoter not the band.
IME, the aggressive pursuit of fees for performing other’s songs is a very spotty thing. Where i lived for so long, a place BTW not known for tourism, enforcement of those rules was nonexistent, but just over 200 miles south on the Florida gulf coast, a live music venue would be harassed out of business for failure to pay the required fees, but less than a hundred miles west on the same coastline there were plenty of tourist destinations where no one was trying to collect those fees. Was it because it was Florida and the other Gulf coast places were in Alabama and Mississippi? If so, why was Pensacola not being as aggressively regulated as Panama City Beach? I finally gave up trying to figure out why enforcement was so uneven and decided it was individual areas and whatever rep the local enforcement body had for said enforcement, that determined which places paid and which didn’t.
This is a fascinating topic. I've never once run into this in many years of playing covers at different types of venues. I'm not semi pro like some of you guys are so maybe our places fly under the radar.
I wonder how many dozens of people Don Henley employs to travel the country shutting down bands playing “Life in the Fast Lane”???
One local venue owner told the BMI and ASCAP reps that as soon as they showed him the royalties actually being paid to the artists playing original material in his room, he'd be glad to pay the fees. No surprise they were unwilling or unable to do so. His venue did not hire cover acts.
I don't know if the algorithms for payment to writers (not the performers, just the writers) have improved over the years, but back in the 1980s BMI and ASCAP would take all the money and divvy it up based on what songs were most popular at the time. So the year that MJ dropped Thriller he got all the money
I've worked with a singer/songwriter who's been recording since the early 1960s and been on major labels, too. He told me he never received a penny of for airplay or live performance of his songs (whether by himself or numerous covers) in the USA but regularly gets checks from the EU for radio play. Go USA!!!
He's also never seen any mechanical royalties for his over a dozen recordings.
I don't know if the algorithms for payment to writers (not the performers, just the writers) have improved over the years, but back in the 1980s BMI and ASCAP would take all the money and divvy it up based on what songs were most popular at the time. So the year that MJ dropped Thriller he got all the money
I've worked with a singer/songwriter who's been recording since the early 1960s and been on major labels, too. He told me he never received a penny of for airplay or live performance of his songs (whether by himself or numerous covers) in the USA but regularly gets checks from the EU for radio play. Go USA!!!
He's also never seen any mechanical royalties for his over a dozen recordings.
Attachments
We came across this at an establishment we played at in South Texas that got hit for this, and hit hard. We Haven’t heard the final tally on this yet.
https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/business/yorktown-business-faces-the-music/article_24127efe-c644-5e96-923b-ad432a229b45.html
Man that's brutal. I get 5K annually for a bar isn't a huge expense but jeez... We're talking about the bar band circuit.
We've had contracts that seem to attempt to put the performance rights on the band, but that's just not the case and they know that. Not even sure there is a mechanism for a band to purchase performance rights for music. Another thing we've seen is certain venues that want only cover bands thinking that they won't need to pay performance rights since the bands are playing their originals. Well, that's not the case either. If the music is on iTunes or Spotify it's likely covered by BMI / ASCAP / SESAC and performance rights need to paid even though the bands are playing only their own music.
Or my own favorite: The skinflint owner who decides to bill the band to recoup some of his money after the licensing reps have made their fly-by and he had to pony up the $$$. I keep wondering who he was trying to skin for the background music on the overhead speakers the nights we didn't play . . . . .
