ASCAP AND THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX.

ASCAP AND THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX. The concept that the copyright owner should receive a royalty every time that a song is played seems startling. However, the copyright owner (think songwriter) receives royalties today which are based on the number of times her song is performed publicly. ASCAP and BMI generally sell broad licenses to use large groups of songs rather than try to collect each time a song is performed. They use broad licenses because at the moment it is not technically feasible to collect the royalty for each performance. But ASCAP does make an effort to distribute its revenues in proportion to the number of times a song is played. Years ago my cousin Walt Schaefer worked for ASCAP and he showed me a very large room filled with people listening on earphones to recordings of radio stations and keeping track of each time a song was played. Every so often one would raise his hand for help in identifying a song. There was what looked like a card catalogue, only the cards contained notes of melodies to help in identifications. As I recall, “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” was supposed to be one of the leading generators of royalties. Now people are envisioning a technology which will do all that the people in that room did and more.