I understand how performance and mechanical and sync royalties work. I can’t find the answer I’m looking for anywhere: I know the venue pays dues for the right to have people perform; I know the collecting organizations distribute the royalties to the artists who own the IP; but HOW do the organizations know WHICH artists to pay?
If I play 45 songs a night at a local pub, how do I know the artists I actually play, will be paid?
Are set lists supposed to be submitted? Do the collection organizations audit venues to see what was performed? Do all represented artists just get a percentage of all royalties collected, regardless of whether their songs are performed? What is the **mechanism** that puts the money in the pockets of the CORRECT artists? Or IS there one?
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If possible the set lists should be submitted in as much detail as possible. Depending on the type of venue it may even be required. I know for example that radio stations have to record this in very high detail and submit it on a regular basis. So they tend to have special music applications which logs everything so that you can put a playlist on shuffle and still be able to submit the set list. For a venue like a pub or a cafe you might only be required to submit the list of songs in the playlist but not in detail which song is played when. But if you have this information the record companies want it and may give you a discount. You can for example get jukeboxes with counters so you can tally up which songs are the most popular and the artist gets more royalties. With modern music streaming services the work of collecting this data have become easier.
Depends on the system used by whoever is collecting and distributing the royalties. The PRS in the UK [have some limited details here](https://www.prsformusic.com/royalties/dj-royalties) about how they work out who to pay royalties to; it comes down to some people reporting what they play, and them sending “music researchers” and unspecified “Music Recognition Technology” that figures this out.
Basically they guess. And this has been controversial in the past, as the systems they have used historically tend to be weighted towards bigger names and the more industry-friendly artists rather than the more independent ones.
ASCAP does sample surveys, and the greater the license fee, the more often they are sampled. So a radio station in a major metro area is going to have a huge fee, they will get sampled regularly. A small town station will be sampled less often. A pub that seats 30 people and has live music once a week will probably never get sampled.
It’s going to be assumed what’s getting played lived is the stuff that is generally popular. And if you cover some unknown local band, they aren’t getting anything.
Assuming you’re in the US here (but many countries have similar systems) — ASCAP, the royalties organization, handles royalties for all registered music and musicians in its jurisdiction. If you’re a “customer” of ASCAP, aka anything from a big TV or radio network to a local bar, you pay a licensing fee to ASCAP based on the size and type of your platform. ASCAP does surveys of the various types of platforms and performance venues, and uses those surveys to estimate how often a particular piece of music is getting played and where. It then calculates the royalties to be paid out of the licensing fees, based on the results of those surveys.
If you are performing your own original music live, there is a set list submission procedure for that, in order to earn royalties.
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