Is Torture by Music a "Performance in Public"? Certain collectives are quick to collect money from those in nursing homes, hospitals, prisons etc. on the basis that these are "public" places. Never mind that the audience is captive and it's their home, like it or not. Well, it turns out that music is used at Guantanamo for torture purposes, according to the BBC. ... Leaving aside the legal niceties about whose law if any applies in that dreadful place, one ...

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At the same time, Last.fm is launching an unprecedented "Artist Royalty" arrangement, whereby those artists not signed with a label who choose to upload their music to Last.fm will receive payment, directly from Last.fm, every time one of their tracks is played. Glad to hear it: our friends at Last.fm are doing quite well. btw. I wouldn't say "unprecedented" because Imeem already does this royalty sharing. So does Napster actually. I make small steady royalty money from Napster, but its ...

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Dear ASCAP, The copyright status of "Happy Birthday To You" and the law related to public performances of copyrighted works have recently been brought to my attention. I would therefore like to request permission in advance to sing "Happy Birthday" to my father at Frenchy's Original Cafe in Clearwater, Florida, on October 8, at approximately 1 pm. By overwhelming clearance departments with frivolous letters, the site's creators hope to make a statement about copyright-gone-amok.

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When a song (in any recorded form) is licensed for TV, film, games, ringtones. Even a small 10 second usage in a major TV show will result in a lot more money than you can make just selling the record. There are two rights ("sides") that need to be licensed: Master-use licenseThe right to use the recording.Synchronization RightsThe right to use the song (in any recorded form). If you are the song writer and self-published (which you are by default) ...

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US Performance Royalty Organizations http://bmi.com http://www.ascap.com SESAC - mostly for country and gospel These guys collect license fees from any public place or broadcaster that plays music, and divides that money up and gives it to the composer and the recording artist. You choose to register with one of the two companies, and they send you the checks (minus some accounting fees). Here's the catch: the shares are split up based on monitoring radio and TV airplay. So club music ...

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