performance royalties

[Rugbass]

If you are a gigging tribute/cover act are you paying royalties to the publishing company for the original songwriters?
how do you market yourselves as tributes to a band and not get nabbed for royalties? I'm curious to everyone's approach. we are being asked to perform as a tribute for a short tour and uncomfortable with the idea of ignoring performance rights and royalties.

 

[fdeck]

AFAIK, your performance venues pay the royalties through their regular ASCAP and BMI licenses. No different than any other band playing copyrighted material.

 

[longfinger]

In addition, you might have to send off setlists to those organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN etc) with proof that a show happened so they know which artists and which songs are being played.

 

[ChrisB2]

Easy. If you're in the USA and playing in music venues, it's NOT your problem.

This topic is covered often, do a search on here, it will give you all the proof you need.

 

[Rugbass]

the fee is 3% of annual ticket receipts. Paid by the entity charging for the tickets. if you sell tickets at your show, you pay the fees. Socan has pretty good online calculators for this. the actual fees for club owners is a lot smaller than 3%.
I guess I was concerned about this and the direct copyright of marketing as a specific band / brand. if you market yourself as an AC/DC tribute, you are clearly trading on that brand - you probably use their images and logos too not to mention the songs. some tribute acts are damn big and the tour we are looking at is not small. does no one pay direct royalties to song owners? If you perform a stage show you need to buy the rights to the script and scores. There's some tributes shows doing 3000 seats around here.