Hello again. I have been reading a lot lately of clubs and bars that have been made to close down due to fines because of not having the right sort of liscense paid to BMI and ASCAP and then having a band come and play a cover of a song. Sometimes a representative of those groups will be there and will then have the bar owner sued for the playing of the song.

I know this is the same with recording a cover of a song. The artist needs to clear the copyright and performance right and so forth. I am wondering if this is both true with Jazz performance and records as well as the whole music is basically the playing and reinterpreting of others songs, true? It seems if this sort of thing were happening long ago then Jazz would be very different and probably not based on popular songs.

Also, do you think it is right to police the shows like this? So many bands in the 1960s and 1970s played many, many cover songs all of the time.

This only became an issue recently with the Zeppelin/Van Halen lawsuit, which was settled for $40,000.


Makes no sense to me....It's one thing to record something and sell it and not pay the original musicians/songwriters....but in a live performance which isn't broadcast....especially since musicians from both bands performed covers of other bands/musicians back in the day and didn't pay them.

Van Halen was covers band when they first started. They even covered Zeppelin.





P.S. Zeppelin really is the last group who should be suing anyone about copyright infringement....as in, stealing other's songs. Shout out to Willie Dixon and all the rest.

To answer your question....outside of this....it hasn't been an issue in any genre of music that I know of.

Ok, thanks! I will have to dig up the links to what I was talking about, but I have seen quite a few stories of people who own small clubs and bars being sued for $30,000 a song of whatever was covered because they did not have the right liscense. These are because of small local bands playing the cover songs as well.

So I read that many places have decided just to not have music at all rather than pay the liscense fees, which is just bad for music.

Sad, the way the industry goes these days.

This has been getting more coverage lately. I just heard about a lawsuit against one of the few venues from my hometown for live music. Really sad.

Hopefully they won't have to close shop.

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1266205

Yes, here is one link:

http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2...-to-liability/

And another:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/07/...cracks-do.html

To me, all of this just sounds ridiculous, as Satchmo said, almost all of the bands start as a covers band.

Why do they have to see that as a menace and not as a promotion? (promotion can bring you money too)

What will come next, law problems to someone that is playing a guitar because he didn't invented that instrument?