October 17, 2010
Music licenser suing City View over fees
Bernie Hornick
[email protected] The Tribune-Democrat Sun Oct 17, 2010, 11:15 PM EDT
— Stevie Nicks wants a piece of a prominent Johnstown businessman.
And so do the Gibb brothers, of “Saturday Night Fever” fame.
Indirectly, through recording industry licenser BMI, they’re suing Andy Lasky and his City View Bar & Grill in federal court – saying he played their songs for karaoke May 7 without paying royalties.
BMI said the club played about 20 of 44 songs without permission that day, including “Landslide” by Nicks, “How Deep is Your Love” by the Bee Gees and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” written by Jim Steinman.
City View owner Andy Lasky did not return a call for comment.
BMI said it catches up with misguided merriment by comparing computerized lists of liquor license holders kept by states with its own list of clubs that pay yearly licensing fees for its music.
The nonprofit licenses just over half of the music in America with 6.5 million songs in its catalog.
Then, it checks out the unlicensed clubs one at a time.
Researchers often record the music inside the club – which a BMI spokesman said is legal in all 50 states.
“Songwriters make a living a penny at a time, or a fraction of a penny at a time,” BMI spokesman Jerry Bailey said from Nashville, Tenn.
“We don’t consider ourselves the police of anything,” he said. “We ask the federal courts to enforce copyright law.”
Club owners are asked to pay a yearly fee of $320 to $9,000, with the average restaurant paying $600.
The fee is based on the fire code capacity and on what Bailey calls the music’s “intensity.” The more intense the scene, the higher the fee.
For a little ambient music, the fee is low. The fee is higher with live music, if a cover is charged and if dancing is encouraged.
BMI files 100 to 200 copyright-infringement lawsuits a year.
“We’re not trying to put these businesses under. If we didn’t do this, some business owners wouldn’t take us seriously,” Bailey said. Most of these civil lawsuits are settled out of court.
Composers not registered with BMI can license their music through another agency, such as ASCAP.
http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x1...View-over-fees