Re: [Harp-L] public domain



John Dekker asked:
How old does a song have to be before it is the public domain?

The current copyright on songs registered after 1977 lasts until the copyright holder has been dead for 50 years. "Life plus 50." It may be until the composer has been dead for 50 years, but in any case, it's a long time before recent work goes into the public domain.


Material registed from 1909-1977 got 28 years plus a 28 year renewal, and then because congress was always dicking around modernizing the copyright law, extensions were issued. This was important because guys like Irving Berlin had valuable copyrights that they'd written around 1909, and they were still producing income, and he was still alive.

Those extensions have been running out for a while now. The 1978 copyright law gave one standard extension, but I no longer recall how long it was for. That is because I am so old that I was actually working for a major publisher in the Brill Building 32 years ago when the 1978 law went into effect.

In fact, this company had recently purchased a huge ocean of songs that hadn't been renewed for their second 28 years. Often they were old country numbers that were as old as America. They hired an arranger whose specialty was writing lead sheets for these tunes that made them seem distinctive - many were absolutely not distinctive - and they filed for the 1978 extensions on this material, and were not challenged.

Don't blame me, I was a grunt.

Also, about how much does a club have to pay in royalties if a copyrighted song is played by a band, and how much of that goes to the song's write? Thanks.

ASCAP and BMI are called 'performance rights' organizations, because the 1909 copyright law gave composers and songwriters the right to be paid for live performance and broadcast performance of their copyright material. They were organized so that a writer doesn't have to get in his car and go around America demanding a payment from every radio station, TV station and live venue. I don't know how much they take from live venuse, but ASCAP used to get 2 percent of the gross billing of broadcast outlets, and BMI used to get 1 percent. This is probably in the ballpark of what they still get.


Both organizations then divvy up their dollars to their members, based on - supposedly - the percentage of performances each member's material was performed in a three month period. For instance, if you're an ASCAP writer, and they have taken in $100M in a quarter, and they calculate that your material got one-tenth of one percent of all ASCAP performances in that quarter, they cut you a check for about $100G's. Most checks are significantly smaller than that. Most songwriters who make their living from their songs make a middle-class income.

How many plays your song got used to be a total guessing game, but now the broadcast performances are tallied by computers that receive a constant flow from data automatically generated by the broadcasters. The only song I ever got radio play on was in decent rotation on about 30 tiny country radio stations. ASCAP didn't notice any plays at all, but that was back when it was a total guessing game. Ha ha on me. Now I'd probably make a few hundred bucks.

I have no idea how the live venue and restaurant performances are tallied, but they may very well be total guesses. They probably have some formulae that infer how much to pay based on broadcast numbers. Or they just pull it out of you-know-where.

In any case, the publisher and the writer(s) split the performance royalties according to whatever deal they made. Used to be a standard 50-50 deal. That has changed, in favor of the writer, if the writer has a good track record.

Here's what you need to know. The live venue, if it has paid for its licenses, has a blanket license to play ALL ASCAP material and/or ALL BMI material for the license period. If you're playing current hits the writers are probably making a piece of those license fees. I suspect that the publishers of famous blues numbers make damned sure that ASCAP and BMI (most blues songs were originally with BMI) know that these songs, still under copyright, are very popular in blues clubs throughout the US of A.





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