Open mic nights at bar lead to lawsuit from BMI over music, ask for $121,000

[dmallind]

173. The difference here is in how you receive income compared to most

Most of us work and are paid for the time, either as employees or small businesses. Some are paid for the production. I for example used to have a side business selling things I made. Just like your sound equipment, I had to invest in tools and equipment. I had to pay for materials too (hey you avoid that one at least). When I sold my products I was paid enough to cover my time, investment and (modest) ability.

What I didn't get is any cut on what happened with that product after I sold it. Resold? Not a penny. Loaned out? Nada. Used in public? Zip. Heck even as a corporate stooge, several companies are still using processes and systems I designed. They paid me once and then never again. That's the disconnect many people see in your argument.

Now surely I agree purely creative products are different. No argument. When you are selling what are essentially ideas there must be a different model. But even here the closest analog to songwriters is surely non-song writers. Novelists and the like. Yep they should get paid and not stolen from willy-nilly even in this digital age. But should a library pay them for every time the book is loaned (do they do this? No idea. Don't think so though). Are used book shops illegal pirates? Book clubs that involve live excerpt reading are thieves? My wife volunteers teaching at a literacy center. Should she be paying Hemingway's estate royalties - his simplistic language yet interesting stories are great for teaching adults BTW?

I straddle the fence here. I have sympathy for your plight, honestly. Yours is a product that is easily duplicated and with limited revenue streams for all but the lucky megastars. But I think BMI et al go too far too. That model is not fair. Creative products should be paid for absolutely, but to expect every single time someone is exposed to them to be financialized is unrealistic. The graphic artist of the billboard you mentioned is paid yes. But he's not paid per car that passes by, and he's not paid every time someone takes a picture of his work and poss it on Facebook. That's what BMI seeks - to charge every time someone is exposed to your music, no matter how many times people decided they want to own it.

You asked for a fairer model. My answer is that music should be like books. We should pay for them to have a copy. We should not pay for them every time we read them, even to a group of people in public. Now if I could directly make money reading a book to people - people paid to hear me read for some strange reason - then royalties are perhaps appropriate. But that model would make bands liable not bars, and only bands that are paid to play your songs, not those who are amateurs. The bar owner may make money when bands are there it's true - but they make money selling the booze and food for which they pay, with your song only as an enticement - a loss leader if they are paying the band.

Your revenue stram is barely tenable unless you sell copies, I get that. That's the market though - people need to be willing to pay to own your music. But your preferred solution is patently unfair - to be paid many times over any time someone uses your product. Even Microsoft can't quite manage that.