ASCAP; BMI: SESAC what are the advantages and strengths of each of
these organizations compared to each other.
I think this question is germaine to a discussion among harp players,
because so many of us are songwriters, too.
The advantages and disadvantages of the three performance rights
organizations change every year. In the years I lived in Nashville, one
year there were better reasons to go with BMI one year, ASCAP the next and
BMI again the third year. SESAC was there but nobody I knew argued for
it. No it is very much a factor.
Back then the two larger orgs would compete by the size of advances they
gave out, among other things, and that was the biggest reason to go with
one or the other for a young writer.
A friend of mine whom I have been close with since the mid-seventies found
his feet after all these years and has had three number one country songs
in the last three years, and is now very hot. He originally went with
SESAC in the late 90's because his publisher at the time had a good
relationship with them, and my friend felt that was a good enough reason to
go with them.
However, his number ones have given him great insight into this
matter. All three of his number ones were co-written with writers who were
signed to either ASCAP or BMI. Since they were both paid for based on
precisely the same number of airplays he was surprised to learn how much
more money he made than his partners.
Recently his SESAC contract was up. He was courted by all three orgs and
one of the other orgs offered him several million dollars more in
guarantees over the same period than SESAC. My friend re-signed with SESAC
anyway because when he calculated the amount of money he'd be making with
them above and beyond the guarantee it was more money than he'd be making
above and beyond the guarantee of the other org. Of course he's betting on
himself. If he writes no more hits he'll probably have done better with
the other org, but he's getting lots of cuts now, and he stands a great
chance of coming up with some more winners.
This'd be the only reason I'd say that this year SESAC is where I'd go myself.
One last bit:
Back in the 70's, the airplay counting methods were hopelessly
imprecise. I knew a guy who's son worked for ASCAP. His job was to take a
hotel room in a town, turn on the radio and turn the dial all day, marking
down the songs he heard. ASCAP would take his information and extrapolate.
Back then I wrote several records that got radio play in small markets but
never moved up into markets ASCAP might've been monitoring. I never made a
nickel from ASCAP because as far as they were concerned I got no plays.
Nowadays radio stations use CD players that can send bar code info through
the net to a computer that calculates airplays in real time, and of course
quite accurately.
That means that this is a good time to be a minor league songwriter7yu721,m
. If radio weren't dying a death it'd be a great time to move up to the
bigs, too.