James Lee Stanley

A few days ago, a friend of mine emailed me with questions about which PRO to join (Performance Rights Organization such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC or Sound Exchange for the internet).    These are the organizations that collect monies on behalf of songwriters, writers, and publishers.  

Whenever someone uses a song that you created in a broadcast or reuse in a film, tv show, on stage, etc, then they are required to license the song, story, recording and pay a fee for the priviledge of using your material.

I know that most of us are so grateful that anyone wants to use anything we’ve created that we frequently don’t want to cause any waves by asking to actually get paid for our endeavors, but I guarantee you that any mechanic, repair man, lawyer, doctor, accountant expects to get paid for their efforts.   We should too. 

Don’t roll over because someone tells you that they can always get another song.   Perhaps they can, but your song had something and the heard it and wanted it for their project, so be reasonable, but hold out for compensation of some sort.

If you don’t think that your art is worth anything, then no one else will either.

So now we get back to those questions.   Do I need a PRO and which one?  

If you plan to do anything with your music then it is probably a good idea to align yourself with one of the PRO’s.   All professional songwriters are represented by at least one of them. 

And yes, you can be represented by them all.   I do this by having a BMI, an ASCAP and a SESAC publishing company.

As a songwriter, you can only be represented by one at a time, but you may have publishing companies with all three.  

This is essentially a nightmare in the making.  In all the other free market countries in the world, there is only one collection agency.    Here there are three and the all go after the same pie, but that’s a discussion for another day.

You decide which PRO you want to go with by looking at two things:    Do you meet the criteria for joining (a commercial release on a commercial label of one of your compositions) and what are they going to do for you?

If you are pressing up 500 copies of your CD to give to friends and family, you have not met the first criteria.   If you are sending it around to radio stations, reviewers and you have a website that is selling the CD, then you probably have met the criteria.

If you are sending the CD to internet stations then you should most definitely join Sound Exchange, as they are the sole collector for this usage.

Regarding the other three, go to them all and ask what they will do for you if you join.   They are all going to paint a rosy picture of what they can do and they will probably tell you of a bunch of things that they will do.  

In truth, they will probably do little or none of the things that they promise besides account to you for  who used your music.   And that’s a long shot as they do sampling and not true accounting.

In this digital age, they could definitely account for every single usage, but they have not set up the infrastructure and probably never will until forced to do so by the government.

So in the final analysis, if you meet the criteria for joining, then I would join the one that has someone you can actually relate to and can get to return a phone  call or an email.

Good luck…I am not bitter, you understand, just pragmatic.     I hope.