By the way, Juke is listed with the Harry Fox Agency for licensing;
evidently others have paid licensing fees to record it, which
establishes another precedent directly tied to this individual
composition.
Not actually to record it.
Unless things have changed radically from when I was in the publishing
business, the only fee you have to pay upfront is that fee to the Fox
Agency for submitting your request for a compulsory license. So that's
sort of like a fee to record it, but I presume you mean 'to record it and
publish the recording' and there's no fee for that. It used to be, you
didn't even have to pay a fee to Harry Fox. You just submitted your
application for a license. You never paid the owner of, say, the Juke
copyright to record it, you only paid them if you sold copies, per copy sold.
The fee you'll pay is for each copy of your recording of Juke that you
sell, and that goes to the copyright owner.
So somebody owns the copyright to the tune, presumeably whoever owns the
Chess music publishing arm.
Harry Fox Agency doesn't actually issue the license. They inform the
listed owner of the copyright (let's call him the publisher) that they have
to issue a compulsory license, and the publisher does the paperwork and
grants the license in writing. I believe that once you request a
compulsory license (and the material is under compulsory license) you can
go ahead and publish your recording. The proof that you requested it is
all you need. But the publisher will send you a license and there may be
some requirement in that license to send them copies of the published
recording.
I forget how that part works. I worked for a very, very large publisher
that had a vast file of vinyl, and more was coming in all the time. I just
know that there was at least one office worker whose job it was to issue
compulsory licenses when the Harry Fox people informed her of
requests. (Somebody else in the company negotiated synch licenses, and he
was really good at squeezing the last penny out of those.)
If I remember correctly, and here we go very iffy, Harry Fox keeps
quarterly tabs on licensed recordings, and gets a small piece of the action
to collect the monies owed. I could be wrong about this. This is where
their money is made, I believe. It's lots of money.
But just like ASCAP and the other P.R.O.'s, the Harry Fox Agency was put in
place to reduce the chaos.