The Music Trap

The Music Trap

Six months ago, I was approached by student  music coordinator at Yale University .   A number of students had formed some bands and were interested in playing in intimate seting of the Koffee? atrium.  It was going to be a pretty quiet Friday night, so I thought this would be a nice way to introduce Koffee? to some of the Yale undergraduates.

These organizers did an amazing job publicizing the event.  Posters everywhere, advertisement in the Yale Daily promoting it... and even  a few spots on the student-run radio station.

 Unfortunately, they did TOO good a job. 

Three weeks later, I received my first of many many many emails, letters and phone calls to come - from the attorneys at BMI.

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of dealing with this parasitic company, allow me to outline who they are and what they do.  BMI is a music licensing company.    If you buy a Madonna CD from the store, and play it in your house with a few friends... no problem.  That is considered "private use".  IF, on the other hand, you play it in your cafe, where your customers can also hear it - it is considered "business use", and you need a music license for that. 

BMI wanted me to purchase a license from them for about $350 per year, plus additional $$ for each live music event I held.  I explained to the BMI attorney that every live-music event I did was with local musicians that only played their own stuff.  He countered that if any musician playing in my establishment did a cover, borrowed a riff, or used any vaguely similar chord structure to an artist that BMI represented, that I would be liable for infringement.

If this were the only potential cost, then I might consider sucking it up and getting the $350 license.  Besides which, I support musicians getting benefits from the music they make.  I just hate the way these licensing companies treat me.

Unfortunately, BMI is just ONE of many music licensing companies.  The big three are BMI, ASCAP and SESAC, but there are a handful of others.    You might have thought that if you get a license from ONE of the companies, that they have some sort of mutual-agreement going on, so you'd be covered... WRONG!    You must get a music license from EACH ONE - which altogether can run into the thousands of dollars per year.   

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, who also owns a cafe, once got a BMI license.  I dont know if this was pure coincidence, or if there is some kind of information sharing going on, but within a couple weeks of paying the BMI license fee, he started getting calls from all the other music licensing companies.  In the end, he was out of pocket a couple grand. 

What to do??  You want to use music legally in your establishment, but you dont want to pay redundant fees to these blood sucking parasite music licensing companies?

Lucky for us, we have two options:

1. Pandora DMX - This is the commercial arm of Pandora.  It works exactly the same way as Pandora, only you buy a specific box to play the music through and you pay a subscription rate of $25/month.  With this, all your music licensing needs for all licensing companies are taken care of by this service.

 

2. XM Radio - For Business-    Like the Pandora DMX, the XM Radio commercial account is a bit more expensive ($32/month), but you have access to the full menu of XM Radio offerings, and  it does not come through  the internet (you will need a small satellite receiver).

There is one downside to this - no live music.  The XM Radio and Pandora DMX services only cover the music coming through their systems.  You will still need live music licensing from BMI if you wish to pursue live music.

This is a real shame.   Up until now, we have done live music every couple weeks - maybe 20-30 times per year.  Frankly, it was never a money spinner for me.  Live music is a pain to find good acts that your demographic would enjoy, organize them, set up  the space etc etc.  It is alot of work.  And all that work for one nights incremental sales.  Even when you do have a good act, you tend to alienate your evening regulars (who cant enjoy a conversation or some reading time), and the people who come for the music dont tend to come back as regular customers. 

I only did live music, because I like to support the small local band who wants a place to play in a public venue.  Now, I have stopped all that - no more live music in my place.  What a shame.   It is places like Koffee? that new music stars are born - without these small venues, people will find it more and more difficult to enter the music industry.  I found this article that highlights some of my thoughts on this matter.

Well, enough for today.  Thanks for reading, and please be sure to leave any thoughts and comments!

Duncan

the Coffeehouse Guy