ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, have changed their licenses for New Media.
We realize that as technology changes and users’ expectations of on-line music grow, ASCAP must continue to be a leader in Internet licensing. Accordingly, we are pleased to announce two new versions of our widely used Internet license agreements: “Non-Interactive 5.0” for non-interactive sites and services; and “Interactive 2.0” for interactive sites and services. A third new agreement, designed for “Wireless Music” (e.g., “ringtones” and “ringbacks”), is available on the Wireless Music page.
ASCAP’s minimum annual fees for the New Media are:
Non-Interactive 5.0: $288
Interactive 2.0: $340
These minimum fees are for webcasters, podcasters, you name it, who don’t make any profit; no donations, no sponsoring, nothing. Minimum fees!
Although ASCAP and it’s sister organizations worldwide (in The Netherlands it’s called BUMA) have done good work for traditional media, like television, but their approach to New Media is not something all musician agree on. Sure, it will work for ‘big name’ artists, but what if you are a fine musician who could use the free airplay using new media like webcasts and podcasts? These new licenses prevent these sort of things for artist who have signed at ASCAP. And those deals are always exclusive deals, same as with BUMA in The Netherlands. So that means that when you sign their contract, you will not be able to publish any of your work under a Creative Commons license. You have given away your rights to them and no matter what cool innovative protocols are developed for the Internet in the next few years, ASCAP will create licenses for it. If you don’t agree, there’s is nothing to do about it.
I feel that the old media simply doesn’t understand the power of the Internet. They don’t understand Open Standards, Open Content, they don’t understand we live in a remix culture. They don’t understand that Disney became such a huge company because they remixed some very old fairytales. They complete lost the definition of fair use.
The Internet can be considered as a bigger media than radio and television. So my advice to all musicians is to focus on the web. If your music gets played in a Podcast show, this means thousands of listeners will listen to your music. The listeners will see your name and website mentioned in the shownotes, so there is a chance that a director working for HBO may contact you for licensing your music :)
Soon video-casting will become popular too, and those video-artists will start looking for artists doing music. They probably don’t want ASCAP artists, at least not if they are non-commercial. So this means, more exposure!
The sad thing is that when an artists signs the ASCAP contract, even non-commercial usage is protected by their licenses. For these artists, this doesn’t mean big business, they get a tiny percentage.
Because of this, artists who are using Creative Commons licenses, I am using those too, will be used more than the ASCAP artists on the web. Commercial usage could simply mean, contacting the artist, create a special license and agree on a specific amount of money for the usage. And that is not a bad thing at all! In the future we will see website, like DiSfish, which will provide a big database of music from artists using Creative Commons licenses. A central database for looking up licenses and buying special licenses for film and documentaries, for example. Because of this, commercial and non-commercial usage will be provided by the same source. ASCAP, on the other hand, doesn’t have a solution for non-commercial usage. They tread everything as being commercial, even if these artists seriously need some airplay!
