When the Audio Two spit “I get money, money I got,” back in 1987, the industry was structured in such a way that artists were actually able to prosper. Having to fight with tight-gripped label executives for a mere percentage of a paycheck wasn’t a reality for Hip Hop artists. Flash forward two decades and the scenario is quite different. Nowadays, record label executives seemingly control the vast share of the music produced, leaving only a few artists to find real monetary success. Yet in the advent of this financial adversity, publishing rights companies like ASCAP prove to be the glimmer of hope needed for artists. Recently, HipHopDX spoke to ASCAP’s Account Manager in Member Management and VP of Operations for iStandard Inc.Ray “Rhythm J” Arrucci about ASCAP’s current position in the music industry.
“Nowadays…the ASCAP royalty check is more likely going to be a bigger check than what get from your record label,” he explained. “If you [are] a big artist that has a smash hit but you don’t have an album coming…which is the case with a lot of these newer guys, instead of waiting on your deal to come through and they finally push out your record with minimal promotion, you have ASCAP checks coming in because you got all this play on the radio…a lot of artists figure, ‘Okay, let me just take the hit on the record deal…and just break even with the record deal just so I can get all my shit on the radio and just get my checks that way. A lot of people aren’t depending on the record deals to get money that way.”
He later added, “[Artists] are going to want to tap as many resources as possible. ASCAP is just one more option an artist can have, and which I feel is a very underrated option. A lot of people just want to get that placement, they just want to get that record deal and then put out an album, but they’re totally missing the point when it comes to [it]. Like, it’s okay to have a theme song [on a show like] ‘Friends.’ I don’t know what band that was…but I’m sure they’re getting plenty of dough.”
Rhythm J broke down the mechanics of ASCAP and publishing rights. He explained how artists can best maximize their monetary potential by forming both publishing and writer accounts with the company. Yet what J says is most important for an artist is to excel at one’s craft and create lasting works that not only find success upon release, but also in years to come.
“ASCAP is more related to the publishing companies of…labels,” explained J. “A lot of people think publishing is performing rights royalties, whereas performing rights royalties equals writing royalties and publishing royalties…if you just have a writer account with ASCAP, you’re only going to get half of your royalties. You need to have a publishing account as well. Basically, [what] a lot of writers do is form their own publishing account and then when they get that publishing deal, let’s say with a Warner, the exchange is Warner takes a portion of your publishing, if not all…they’re going to say ‘Okay, we’re going to take all your stuff, and we’re going to shop it everywhere, try and get it on radio, try and get it on TV…and in exchange, we’re going to get a piece of your publishing.’ That’s called the administration deal…there’s a whole bunch of variations of that…but at the end of the day, the biggest moneymakers in performing rights and publishing and all are the people that have longevity and have like those timeless songs, let’s say a song like [Jay-Z’s ] “Big Pimpin.’” That song came out like 10 years ago and they’re still playing it on the radio.”
ASCAP isn’t wholly reserved for artists signed to labels, however. J explained that ASCAP doesn’t discriminate against artists based on the Internet. Rather, the company’s goal is to ensure that all artists receive payments for any song featured on radio or TV.
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“It doesn’t matter to ASCAP how you’re advertising or how you came up: bottom line is, are you getting plays on the radio or are you getting plays on TV,” said J. “Everyone gets the same treatment. ASCAP can’t say ‘Oh…his whole career is based on the web; we’re not going to pay him as much royalties.’ It’s not even that. It’s like you’ve just got to follow the guidelines…and if NBC is paying of X amount of dollars if you get a placement on a series, you should be trying to get some more tracks on NBC.”
Rhythm J has seen the game evolve and change in order to best match the industry’s model. According to J, the biggest evolution he has witnessed is how third-party publishing libraries have proved the middleman between artists and media outlets.
“Well a lot of things that I’ve seen evolve [with publishing rights]…are these third-party publishers,” noted J. “The basic situation would be that you get a non-exclusive publishing deal and they shop your tracks…to stations like MTV, VH1, any station basically on television…and in exchange for doing all this work for you, they get a piece of the publishing [with varying] percentages…I think it’s evolved because now a producer doesn’t always have to get connects on their own. They can just go to a publisher library…like Pump Audio…and basically, they do the rest for them. Then again, the downfall to that also is you’ve got these stations going to these libraries and you have literally thousands and thousands of full songs, tracks, etc. There’s a good and a bad side to it, but that’s how the scene has evolved since I started. These companies have sprung up a lot more rapidly than I’ve seen in the past.”
Yet ASCAP doesn’t just protect the artists’ checks. ASCAP also aids radio and TV stations by preventing the necessity of maintaining individual licenses for each artist. Instead, all licensing is channeled through ASCAP, ultimately streamlining many of the issues with performing rights.
“Without ASCAP, what would happen is artists [and] producers would have to call every station and survey every TV station and say ‘Hey guys, you played my stuff and you guys owe me money because it’s against the law to play music that’s not yours unless you pay a license,’” he explained. “[ASCAP prevents stations from] having individual licenses for every artist. Think about a radio station paying a Jay-Z license, a 50 Cent license, a Young Jeezy license…it’d be crazy. That’s why everything is centered through ASCAP.”
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The biggest issue ASCAP faces now is online music streaming. The ubiquity of music blogs and online radio stations like Pandora and Last.fm has thrust performing rights into uncharted territory. Where radio is limited in how many songs they can play in one day, online music streaming has no limit, something that could prove disastrous for artists.
“The whole thing going on right now is [whether] a streaming piece of work [on the Internet] is…labeled as a performance,” he explained. “The definition of performance is basically, on any medium, something being played in a public place entertaining several people. A lot of websites and blogs and things like that, when they have a streaming song, a lot of times they’re saying that doesn’t constitute as a performance because you’re not downloading it, you’re just listening to it and keeping it moving. There’s a back-and-forth argument between ASCAP and sites like AOL and Yahoo where, right now, they’re trying to constitute what is a performance as far as streaming music goes. If ASCAP wins all that…there’s going to be an opening of floodgates with Internet performances and a lot of these websites that are not paying an ASCAP licensing fee will come around…there are actually a few websites now that are paying an ASCAP licensing fee.”
He added, “A radio station can only play a certain amount of songs per day…I’m sure websites like HipHopDX, a full day’s worth of radio plays, or approximately 240 plays, comes and goes in five minutes, so the amount of money for that [radio play] is going to be a whole lot more [than the Internet play] due to the saturation of how many times an Internet stream can be played back…it’s going to be a long, long battle, because when you have major corporations like AOL and Yahoo…going up against a performing rights society, they can probably hold the fort a little bit, but I think in the long run, when radio and TV get played less and people login more and more, the pressure is just going to build until the inevitable happens.”
Artists looking to join ASCAP as a writer and publisher can follow the link here, while current ASCAP members looking to register a title can follow the link here. Artists can also contact Rhythm J at his personal blog.
