Dance Music Business Resource

ASCAP attacks

ASCAP demands $1000 from a small non-profit art gallery in Baltimore.

Actually, it wasn't really a concert; it was more of a performance-art piece by Lee Connah involving "old recycled objects" and the playing of vintage vinyl records.

ASCAP demands big money from a mostly world music non-ASCAP club. But the club gets caught playing a Madonna record one night and ... pays up.

And as usual, all the money that ASCAP takes in it gives to artists that show up on commercial radio. Its a mob racket. They collect from every coffee house and club and they give all of that money to commercial radio artists.

In Europe clubs will allow you to submit a playlist and distributes accordingly. Especially for festivals, so I have heard, its a good idea to submit that playlist because not a lot of other people are bothering. If you played all your own stuff, you will get paid.

There should be a system whereby artists and venues can pledge that there is no ASCAP/BMI music being played. ASCAP was formed as an artists organization, a new one is required to protect us all from ASCAP. The problem is that a DJ may not think about it and slip some remix or pop hit in (even as a joke).


Good article, worth a read.

You only get money from ASCAP when your song is sampled. If you're getting airplay on commercial radio, you'll probably be sampled, maybe quite a lot. If you're not getting airplay on commercial radio, the odds of never getting sampled is pretty high. If you are an independent artist, the odds of being on commercial radio tend toward zero.