American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a non-profit performance rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly. ASCAP collects licensing fees from users of music created by ASCAP members, then distributes them back to its members as royalties (BMI has a similar method for its members). In effect, the arrangement is the product of a compromise: when a song is played, the user does not have to pay the copyright holder directly, nor does the music creator have to bill a radio station for use of a song.

In 2005, ASCAP collected US$750 million in licensing fees and distributed US$646 million in royalties to its members, with a 12.5% operating expense ratio. In the United States, ASCAP competes with two other performing rights organizations: Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC).

History

ASCAP was established in New York City on February 13, 1914 to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members, then mostly writers and publishers associated with New York’s Tin Pan Alley. ASCAP’s earliest members included the era’s most active songwriters – Irving Berlin, Otto Harbach, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern and John Philip Sousa. Not long after, many other prominent songwriters became members. As of August 2007, ASCAP claims 300,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers as members.

In 1919, ASCAP and the Performing Right Society of Great Britain signed the first reciprocal agreement for the representation of each other’s members’ works in their respective territories. Today, ASCAP has reciprocal agreements all over the world and licenses the U.S. performances of hundreds of thousands of international music creators.

The advent of radio in the 1920s brought an important new source of income for ASCAP. Radio stations originally only broadcast performers live, the performers working for free. Later, performers wanted to be paid and recorded performances became more prevalent. ASCAP started collecting license fees from the broadcasters. Between 1931 and 1939, they could increase rates by over 400%. [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html TED Talk: Larry Lessig, minute 6:00]

In 1940, when ASCAP tried to double license fees again, radio broadcasters started to boycott ASCAP and formed their own royalty agency Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). During a ten month period lasting from January 1 to October 29, 1941, no music licensed by ASCAP (1,250,000 songs) was broadcasted on NBC and CBS radio stations. Instead, they played more regional music and styles like rhythm and blues or country that had been traditionally neglected by ASCAP. Eventually, the differences between ASCAP and the broadcasters were settled and ASCAP agreed to fees much lower than in the preceding years. In the 1950s and 1960s, ASCAP initiated a series of lawsuits to recover the position they lost during the boycott of 1941, without success. [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468301604.html "ASCAP versus BMI"]

Today, ASCAP is still one of the most important royalty agencies with over 11,500 local commercial radio stations and 2000 non-commercial radio broadcasters being licensees. ASCAP was the first U.S. performing rights organization to distribute royalties for performances on the Internet, and continues to pursue and secure licenses for websites, digital music providers and other new media.

ASCAP honors its top members in a series of annual awards shows in seven different music categories: Pop, Rhythm and Soul, Film and Television, Latin, Country, Christian, Rock, Metal, Rap, and Concert Music. In addition, ASCAP inducts jazz greats to its Jazz Wall of Fame in an annual ceremony held at the society’s New York offices.

Through its ASCAPlus Awards Program, ASCAP compensates those writers whose works are substantially performed in venues and media outside of its surveys. An independent panel reviews the applications and makes cash awards to deserving members as well as writers whose works have a unique prestige value. ASCAP is the only performing rights organization with a cash awards program of this kind. One common criticism is that the awards are actually quite low, normally ranging in the $25 - $100 range, and the reasoning behind the award is withheld from the writer.

In 2004 ASCAP partnered with Nimbit, Inc. to offer "ASCAP Web Tools" to ASCAP members. In 2008 ASCAP extended the partnership with nimbit and created and ASCAP Edition of the Nimbit platform. The tools include direct to fan web storefronts, centralized web content management, extended online distribution, coordinated web & print design, and email marketing tools as well as widget based stores and applications for MySpace and Facebook.

In April 2006, ASCAP inaugurated its annual ASCAP “I Create Music” EXPO, the first national conference fully dedicated to songwriting and composing. The first EXPO featured workshops, panels, mentor sessions and performances with notable figures from all music genres and sectors of the music industry. The second EXPO took place between April 19 and 21, 2007. Highlights included interview with well-known performer and industry insiders.

Criticism

ASCAP attracted media attention in 1996 when it threatened Girl Scouts of the USA and Boy Scouts of America camps that sang ASCAP's copyrighted works at camps with lawsuits for not paying licensing fees. [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html "Birds sing, but campers can’t - unless they pay up" Lisa Bannon] These threats were later retracted. [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html "ASCAP Changes Its Tune; Never Intended to Collect Fees for Scouts' Campfire Songs, Group Says" Ken Ringle]

ASCAP has also been criticized for its extremely non-transparent operations, including the refusal to release attendance records for board members, the notes from board meetings, and the reasoning behind their weighting formulas which determine how much money a song or composition gets paid for use on TV or radio. [http://www.filmmusicmag.com/articledetail/ASCAP-Since-AFJ2---A-Series-of-Unfortunate-Events-13.html "ASCAP Since AFJ2 - A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Mark Holden]

ee also

* Copyright collective
* Performing Right Society

References

Further reading

*"This Business of Music" by Sidney Shemel; M William Krasilovsky. New York : Billboard Publications, 1990. ISBN 0823077063
*"This Business of Songwriting" By Jason Blume. Billboard Books, 2006 ISBN 0823077594
*"All You Need to Know About the Music Business" By Donald S. Passman. Simon and Schuster, 2003. ISBN 0743246373

External links

*ASCAP [http://www.ascap.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.ascap.com/about/history/ ASCAP's history]
* [http://www.myspace.com/ascap ASCAP Myspace page]
* [http://www.crazedhits.com/interview-todd-brabec/ Video Interview with the Executive Vice President of ASCAP]