We are a small (100-150) music club located in downtown Detroit. We hire bands to perform original music. We often host 3 or 4 bands per night and often have music 2-4 times per week. Most bands give us their CD and ask us to play it at the bar. All we play at the bar are CDs that the bands give us.
A BMI rep stopped in today and basically told me that we owe BMI $1100 for music licensing this year. His contention is that BMI cannot be sure if we are playing unlicensed music or not. There is a chance we are playing licensed music, therefore we have to pay licensing fees like we were hosting a Bob Seger cover band 2-4 nights per week!
The people who play music at our club are people love music. They write it themselves. They play it themselves. They own it themselves. Who's to say they can't give it away? Who's to say that when they give it away, the owner of the building where they give it away needs to pay for music they're not playing?!
This is plain extortion any way you cut it. I don't want to give up promoting new music but damn! I guess I'll take the paper work to my lawyer and we'll see where we'll go from here....
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by detroitlagerman.
BMI
We are a small (100-150) music club located in downtown Detroit. We hire bands to perform original music. We often host 3 or 4 bands per night and often have music 2-4 times per week. Most bands give us their CD and ask us to play it at the bar. All we play at the bar are CDs that the bands give us.
A BMI rep stopped in today and basically told me that we owe BMI $1100 for music licensing this year. His contention is that BMI cannot be sure if we are playing unlicensed music or not. There is a chance we are playing licensed music, therefore we have to pay licensing fees like we were hosting a Bob Seger cover band 2-4 nights per week!
The people who play music at our club are people love music. They write it themselves. They play it themselves. They own it themselves. Who's to say they can't give it away? Who's to say that when they give it away, the owner of the building where they give it away needs to pay for music they're not playing?!
This is plain extortion any way you cut it. I don't want to give up promoting new music but damn! I guess I'll take the paper work to my lawyer and we'll see where we'll go from here....