eli5, Music industry folks: royalty question

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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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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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