• Registered: 2016-02-25
  • Posts: 23

Re: BMI

Interesting turn of events for us, in that one venue we play actually stood up to the BMI people

Apparently BMI has a contingent of net surfers , who monitor social media for live music, then send in their muscle with bureaucratic threats

So they found a bar we played, and came down on the top dog , insisting on restitution OR legal fireworks yada yada.....

But it was a private 501C3 club , which legally takes 'public presentation' out of BMI's own doctrine

Not being a pushover to BMI, the prez of said club actually hired legal counsul to throw this back in BMI's face , to which they did not respond

Rather disingenuous of BMI , but lesson learned,  i guess for those of us gigging  VFW's , AL, Eagles, Moose , et all private clubs can continue to do so and ignore them

~S~

  • Registered: 2015-07-31
  • Posts: 2,793

Re: BMI

Our local organisation for copywrite is APRA (Australasian Preforming Right Association) which covers Australia and NZ.  I think a big frustration for muscians world wide is the way the big music companies and those with the cash can trade and make a killing financially on the songwriters work. It sounds like the BMI has stiffled the up and coming who arent going to make a big dent in the earning power of those with plenty of cash  anyway. I know amatuer Musical theatre here always find it a big hurdle to find  the money needed to secure the right's to put on shows. Richard OBrien a kiwi who wrote  Rocky Horror Picture Show felt it was outrages the fees charged for people to cover his work who weren't going to make a personal fortune out of it. He felt that copywrite organisations  had to much say on how or who could benifit from his work.