In most countries outside the United States, motion picture theaters are required to pay performance royalties for music used in theatrically distributed films. These fees are collected by the local performing-rights society in each country (PRS in England, GEMA in Germany, JASRAC in Japan, SACEM in France, SOCAN in Canada, APRA in Australia, BUMA in the Netherlands, etc.) which, in turn, distribute royalties to the writers and publishers of music contained in the films distributed in their territories. The foreign societies will remit the writer's share of such monies directly to the performing rights society that a writer is a member of (i.e. ASCAP in the U.S.), which will then pay these theatrical performance royalties as a foreign distribution. In simple language, what this means is that, if you managed to get a song in a movie that is released outside the U.S., you'll get checks from your performing rights society that they in turn have received from the foreign performing rights organizations that collected the money for you in the first place. In contrast to the handling of writer royalties, the music publisher normally allows its representative in each foreign territory to directly collect its publisher royalty share in the local country.

Theater license fees vary by country and are usually a percentage of the theater's box office receipts. Because of the worldwide appeal of many motion pictures -- Titanic and Star Wars, to cite a couple of obvious examples -- it's not unusual for successful films to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in theatrical performance royalties

Even though in the US the royalty companies haven't yet adopted this absurd concept -- "pay for music used in the film" -- although I can just imagine the ASCAP guy drooling at the thought of such an arrangement -- here in the states ASCAP & BMI still try to extract every loose penny that might be rattling around in anyone's pocket. They want venues to pay a licensing fee (which we do) that is a blanket fee for the entire year; it allows us to play any music that they represent either prerecorded non-sync or performed by artists at our live shows. The fee is based on the number of seats and the number of performances we put on average in a year. Yet these royalty companies also hound the artists who perform music in our theatres to also pay a licensing fee for the very same music that we already paid for by virtue of our fee. A fee for the same piece of music is being collected twice.

They wanted to do the same with radio stations. The stations pay ASCAP and BMI royalties, then the royalty companies want to force the restaurant owner who plays a radio in his establishment to pay a royalty fee also. Again, the royalty companies are collecting twice. Or would like too -- I think a restaurant association successfully fought that battle and won.

This is nothing less than extortion and should be fought in court any place the royalty companies try to pull that kind of a shakedown; in the case of performers in venues like ours, they still are being harassed, so far to my knowledge -- the scam continues. It certainly would make a good class action suit for some aggressive law firm who wanted to fight it. The practice harms both the venue and the performer.

Frank

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