The August '02 and September '02 issues of the Piping Times have articles that
discuss copyright. There were written by Duncan McCrone, who is the Scottish
manager of MCPS (Mechanical-Copyright Protection Ltd.) These are written
from the point of view of protecting compositions written by folks now living.
> Steve Wyrick wrote:
> Jack Campin wrote:
>> American copyright law is weird and American copyright law on broad-
>> casting is even weirder. Anybody know how it ever came about that
>> US radio broadcasters don't pay any royalties?
>
> Can that be right? I don't know much about American copyright law but I do
> know BMI collects royalties from radio stations for songs played and
> distributes them to songwriters who are members. -Steve
I was told several years ago how things work in America. Assuming things
haven't changed, and that I was told correctly, here's roughly how it works.
Radio stations submit playlists and royalties to one (or two) of several BMI-
like collecting agencies. The agencies collate the statistics and determine
the top X (10, 100, 1000, whatever) artists/groups that have been played over
the past month. *All* royalties are divided up between those top X people.
Nothing goes to the artists and groups who aren't in that top X list.
I'm sure details given above aren't *quite* right. It might be that the
collection time period is a week, 20 days, a quarter, or something else. It
could also be that the royalties are divided equally or prorated. Regardless
of those specifics, that's how US radio is supposed to work.
Wayne
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