Finally, a court ruling about digital music that seems grounded in some semblance of reality! ASCAP attempts to double dip into royalty streams by claiming digital download count as public performances has been slapped down by a federal court. This confused me, since ASCAP sells itself as being super artist-friendly, and this tactic was sure to hurt artist’s audiences by making it more difficult to distribute their music. I tried tried to get some insight into this from the local Chicago ASCAP office when the story broke a few weeks ago, but they didn’t return my emails.
As an aside, I’d like to point out that all my interaction with representatives from ASCAP has always been positive, and in Chicago they do their damndest to get exposure for artists they sign with. So I view this whole legal action as a gross misstep grounded in the greed of ASCAPpers in corporate positions … which would probably explain why our local reps had nothing to say. Would you want to go o0n record disagreeing with the actions of the boys upstairs? Probably not.
Wouldn’t collecting additional money from digital download “performances” benefit artists, since ASCAP’s job is to collect royalties on behalf of the artist? How does this hurt the musician? They are still able to post MP3s anywhere they see fit, they just may possibly be paid for some of the downloads.
It doesn’t aid the artists if it pushes the cost of that download further upwards. $0.99 already seems to be the limit people are willing to pay, and further royalty requirements would certainly NOT influence digital distributors or labels to take less of a cut so ASCAP can collect more.