Austin Losing Music Jobs

WeFixFlats

WeFixFlats

Respect The Clave
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Jun 1, 2014
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Austin, Texas
http://www.statesman.com/news/business/austin-lost-1200-music-industry-jobs-in-past-4-yea/nqT6G/

That's a lot of people. And 'The Live Music Capitol of the World' myth is finally ending. Unlike a lot of northern cities where old movie theaters have been converted into small or medium sized venues, it's either small clubs or larger halls(Moody for example) where the artists have so much overhead(insurance, etc) they can't make any money. There's nothing good 'in between'. Some would say 'Emo's' but that's all standing, general admission;same for Stubbs which is outdoors. My default is to go to The Saxon Pub and hear Grissom play his ass off on Tuesday's @6pm.
 
That's a shame about Austin. A similar thing happened in Detroit when Motown Records left and moved to LA in the 70s. Even though there was a pretty large live music scene here, for some reason, there was a ripple effect on the music industry in town, and it simply withered on the vine.

Right now it barely has a pulse, though there is evidence of a slight uptick over the past couple of years as the art community seems to be growing.

Even ad music work in town has had a downturn in recent years.
 
LSchefman said:
Because the Polka is about to make a comeback?

I sure hope so, because I learned to play the accordion as a little guy in the 50s.
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You know it :p

Oddly though, Madison has been quietly growing in the national music scene... Somehow, lol. Made a few top 10 lists, but always right behind Austin... Except number of concerts per capita, which the city has taken #1 in for a few years.
 
Can't wait to be close enough to Madison to start hitting these shows up again!
 
Probably the only reason I like living here... Spent less than $100 last year in concert tickets, and saw probably 17 or 18 big acts... A lot of free concerts happening all summer
 
Here we go...so the free marketplace isn't good enough to solve the problems with 'the music scene', and now here comes the City of Austin sticking their noses into it; the government is 'here to help'...ex: 'such as encouraging venues to add gratuities for musicians to customers’ bills'..so they would encourage a 'mandatory virtual tip jar'?. I can imagine the scenario. You go to a club or whatever, have some food and drink, someone is playing guitar and singing 'Whiskey River' or more likely an original because of ASCAP/BMI fines and on the check is a $2 'musician tip'. So what if they're terrible, they still get 'a tip'?

http://www.statesman.com/news/business/mayor-unveils-plan-to-boost-austins-music-industry/nqYbP/
 
WeFixFlats said:
Here we go...so the free marketplace isn't good enough to solve the problems with 'the music scene', and now here comes the City of Austin sticking their noses into it; the government is 'here to help'...ex: 'such as encouraging venues to add gratuities for musicians to customers’ bills'..so they would encourage a 'mandatory virtual tip jar'?. I can imagine the scenario. You go to a club or whatever, have some food and drink, someone is playing guitar and singing 'Whiskey River' or more likely an original because of ASCAP/BMI fines and on the check is a $2 'musician tip'. So what if they're terrible, they still get 'a tip'?

http://www.statesman.com/news/business/mayor-unveils-plan-to-boost-austins-music-industry/nqYbP/
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I have nothing to say about the tip issue, but ASCAP/BMI/SESAC aren't fines.

Since 1787 the copyright law has given composers the exclusive right to perform their works. Copyright is a right that has been in the US Constitution from Day One. No one has the right to perform a work but the copyright owner. It's exclusive. But it can be licensed.

The composers can't realistically go around to bars and venues and radio stations, and individually grant these rights to third parties, or go around to venues to collect the money, so they assign the rights via the performance rights organizations, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, who then collect performance royalties on behalf of the artists.

It's not an unfair deal, and it doesn't cost the bars an arm and a leg, despite their complaining about it. For most places, it's less than $200 a year.

It's no different than software companies enforcing their copyrights with licensing fees, except they charge for them direct instead of having someone else collect their licensing fees.

I've testified on this subject before my State Senate, who incidentally, didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. And I don't expect most here will understand what I've said, either, but I have hope! ;)

Point is, if you've created music, and other people want to perform it (which includes broadcasting a recording of it), you're entitled to be paid. That's how copyright works. And that's a big part of how artists make a living, myself included.

All that ASCAP/BMI and SESAC are is agents hired by the artist to handle the performances of their work, that is, to license it for public performance, and collect the $ on the licenses. They're not "selling" music, and they're not charging "fines." They're doing what they're legally entitled to, and are supposed to, do on behalf of music creators.

If you're concerned about the "free marketplace" then you have to understand that part of that is the word, "marketplace," meaning, composers and artists have the RIGHT to decide how to market the use of their copyrighted works. That's fair, isn't it?

No one HAS to play music written by someone else.
 
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There are a lot of people that thought all music should be free. The subject was touched on in the biography of Peter Grant which I'm in the middle of now.

That was the 70s. Then came things like Napster and the Metallica suit.

I'm on the side of Metallica (and the law). Creative content belongs to the creator whether it is music, art, software or any other "work product". People absolutely deserve to be compensated for their efforts.

The Austin law is just obfuscation. Adequate mechanisms are already in place as Les details above for royalties. If the club or restaurant owner wants to recoup some of those costs, they can handle it on their own with higher prices for food and drink or a cover charge. No need for new laws.
 
rugerpc said:
There are a lot of people that thought all music should be free. The subject was touched on in the biography of Peter Grant which I'm in the middle of now.

That was the 70s. Then came things like Napster and the Metallica suit.

I'm on the side of Metallica (and the law). Creative content belongs to the creator whether it is music, art, software or any other "work product". People absolutely deserve to be compensated for their efforts.

The Austin law is just obfuscation. Adequate mechanisms are already in place as Les details above for royalties. If the club or restaurant owner wants to recoup some of those costs, they can handle it on their own with higher prices for food and drink or a cover charge. No need for new laws.
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Yes, Ruger, you totally get it.
 
rugerpc said:
Every now and then....
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It's a funny thing about intellectual property. People don't understand it, so they don't respect your rights if you own it.

People "get" that if they want to live in your house, they have to pay you rent for your property, in other words, they have to "license" the right to live there from you, the property owner.

But folks have a more difficult time getting their heads around the idea that intellectual property is also a type of property, and that intellectual property has an owner who can let you rent it, but only legally by license.

Or people can use your property dishonestly, by stealing it, or refusing to pay you to use it despite your right to control it. Like squatters who live in your property because you live in another state, for example.

ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are like your rental agents. They rent your property out, and then collect your rent - your licenses - for the use of your property. That's all they do. There's nothing more to it than that.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to grasp. It's so simple!

In the late 90s, the Restaurant and Hotel Owners Association hired hundreds of lobbyists to hurl epithets at the performance rights organizations, calling them "the music monopoly." I heard this phrase in testimony in the Michigan legislature when I went to the Senate to testify on behalf of music rights property owners.

Well, it's no more a monopoly than your own right to do what YOU want with YOUR house or other property. A copyright is a legal monopoly to control the use of your property just as any other form of property ownership is.

The object of this effort was to weaken the right of copyright owners to effectively control their own property. The fact that the party of property, the Republican Party, took this lobby money and engaged in that effort is beyond my imagination, but that's exactly what they did. It blew my mind after supporting the Republicans for a long time in my life.

The joke is that these idiot lobbyists went to the State legislatures to make this effort, when in fact, copyright law is entirely within the Jurisdiction of the Federal courts and Federal law, and cannot be messed with by the States under the US Constitution. And this has been the case since Day One, 1787.

It is not buried in the Constitution, it is in Article 1, Section 8, which assigns to Congress the power to:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

And it is a law that was put in place not by liberals, but by the very conservative Founding Fathers of our country who wished to control their own inventions and creations. Please respect it.
 
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My mistake, ASCAP/BMI fees are not fines. The owners of the establishment must pay the fees, based I think in part, the capacity of the place as determined by the local fire codes, but I could be wrong about that also. But I do think that they have to display with a decal on the door or somewhere prominent that they've gotten the license by the organizations.
 
WeFixFlats said:
My mistake, ASCAP/BMI fees are not fines. The owners of the establishment must pay the fees, based I think in part, the capacity of the place as determined by the local fire codes, but I could be wrong about that also. But I do think that they have to display with a decal on the door or somewhere prominent that they've gotten the license by the organizations.
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Actually, the fees are determined by the number of TVs and radio speakers they have, unless it's a live venue, in which case other factors are taken into consideration. And that's not unfair to the venues, who charge more for drinks and food for live entertainment, and keep people in their seats longer buying food and liquor if they're entertained.

The decal is optional, it just lets the performing rights organizations reps know that they're covered.

I know you meant well, WeFixFlats. I don't blame you for not wanting a lot of government intervention - we have too much already IMHO. I just don't know how else these rights can be handled. Most of my royalty income is the result of TV and radio broadcasts of my works. I can tell you that some performance rights organizations, like SESAC, do a much better job for their clients than, for example, BMI, but even so, so much falls through the cracks that it's a damned shame.

I discovered a few years ago that the ad agencies who were supposed to report broadcast contracts for my work to ASCAP and SESAC, weren't doing it, or were doing it incorrectly, and I could only go back ONE year to collect my past due royalties. I lost tens of thousands of dollars each year for many years without even knowing it, because broadcasts simply fell through the cracks because my clients violated their contracts to me. And royalties were part of the back end of my deal that let me lower prices to them on the front end. So I got screwed.

And I'm not alone. I know many, many folks in my business who suffered the same fate. Who got our money instead, god only knows.

And what could I do? Tell my ad agency clients to go to hades? I depend on them. I had to grin and bear it. Terrible situation. Now of course, I have an agent who registers all of my work properly, for a fee, of course, to do what the ad agencies aren't doing correctly in the first place.

It's just one example of how easy it is for music creators to be screwed into the ground. No, the agencies didn't mean me harm. They were simply negligent in their obligation that was part of my deal with them. Grrrrr.

It's a shame that our society is so "It's all about me," that we lose sight of basic rights that our country was founded on, and this includes intellectual property and its value.

I don't mean to harangue everyone here. But we as musicians really would be a lot better off if we supported one another, because creating music, and performing music is hard work!

I just paid a plumber $300 plus to come in for 20 minutes and install 50 bucks worth of parts in my toilet that wore out. I could have done it myself at one point, but my hand is so seriously compromised by nerve damage that I had no choice.

But I know musicians who spent years on a piece, and it gets airplay, and they get...nothing. It's a shame, I tell ya.
 
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On June 1st, 2015 a 'Austin Music Census' was published; found here:

http://www.austintexas.gov/department/austin-music-census-report

It's 235 pages. The Executive Summary is worth checking out if you have the time to read it. It presents the cold hard facts of the business in this town when it was published. And does present some solutions, without government intervention, that could be helpful to everyone concerned, in my opinion.
 
So I guess for guys like me, we always looked a things a certain way, and that seemed to be the way everyone else looked at it, so we thought it was the right way.

I've known all along, that I can't just go in my music room and record a Led Zeppelin song, a Jimi song, a Rush song and a Van Halen song, then sell 1 million copies of my CD and make a million dollars... without paying license fees. But, I also always assumed it was ok, if I was to take those songs, go play them at a venue, and get paid a couple hundred dollars. I never realized that was an infringement on the rights of the original artist.

In another thread, I mentioned a young guy that I was showing some songs. He plays with his guitar teacher in some small clubs, just two guitars and and vocals. His teacher is older than I am, has played and taught for years. A few months back, the kid comes into work one day and said his teacher is freaking out and they won't be playing any more gigs because there are "people" going around busting musicians for performing other peoples music. The teacher told him that they were literally walking into bars where bands were performing live, and DURING performances were walking onstage and serving papers to them. Now, I was kind of in disbelief. In fact, after he told me that twice, I almost started asking more questions, but I still thought it was BS. But he said his teacher insisted that several of his guitar buddies had been involved and they were fined, taken to court or something. I kind of didn't believe him, so I didn't ask any more questions.

That said, I'm still not clear on who owes whom, for what, if lets say I join a cover band and go play 20 different groups songs in a night, collect about $100 as one member of a 5 piece, and go home. I'll re-read the thread, but if someone would clarify that I'd appreciate it... and maybe next time I see him I'll ask for more details since it now sounds like it wasn't all a fairy tale.

I am friends with several professional singers and musicians. One of them told me one time that it was something like $0.11 every copy you sold of a recorded song someone else had rights too. So if I record say an Ozzie song, A) do I owe Ozzie 11 cents for every copy I sell, and B) do I owe Ozzie 11 cents every time I play it live in a paying venue? Is that the kind of thing we're talking about here?
 
There probably isn't a weekend warrior alive that hasn't circumvented the law either knowingly or unwittingly. I played in Dallas Texas for about 20 yrs straight and at different levels of clubs and bars, some great some not, but not once did anyone bring up BMI or ASCAP nor did any agents ever approach us or the venue. With the napster and Metallica thing, I think lots of people who were witless in it are now informed to the better.
 
Clubowners have been trying for years to avoid paying ASCAP and BMI. Back in the '70's, when you could play cover songs in bars and actually get paid a living wage, I made my living doing just that. Back then, the licensing fees were just part of the clubowner's cost of doing business, whether the place had a band, a DJ, or a jukebox, and as someone pointed out, it wasn't an arm and a leg. Along about 1980, give or take a year or two, the clubowners figured out that, not only did they not have to pay musicians, they could actually get the musicians to pay them, as well as foot the advertising bill. The concept of paying professionals to do a professional job went out the window, and audiences didn't care, because with a DJ playing recorded music, the dancers became the center of attention instead of those pesky musicians. And it's only gotten worse since then--it all goes along with the concept that a lot of people have, that music should be free, and musicians are all happy-go-lucky gypsies who can live on fresh air and sunshine and don't need to eat. I'm glad I'm retired--I don't miss being exploited at all!
 
Parralax view said:
There probably isn't a weekend warrior alive that hasn't circumvented the law either knowingly or unwittingly. I played in Dallas Texas for about 20 yrs straight and at different levels of clubs and bars, some great some not, but not once did anyone bring up BMI or ASCAP nor did any agents ever approach us or the venue. With the napster and Metallica thing, I think lots of people who were witless in it are now informed to the better.
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It isn't the bands that need to deal with ASCAP or BMI, ever. It's only the venue.
 
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