Radio Royalties

Great is ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). To ASCAP belong about 1,450 composers and writers and about 130 music publishing houses in the U. S. ASCAP holds the performance rights to their works. ASCAP collects royalties for its members, deducts about 20% for operating overhead, 10% more for the 20 foreign performing-rights societies with which it is affiliated. What is left is allocated, 50-50, between composers and writers and publishers. Distribution to individuals is arbitrary, based not upon number of performances but upon ASCAP's fixed ratings.

Radio, the juiciest source of ASCAP royalties, pays the society monthly on a contract basis, muttering horrible epithets. The present contracts, under which individual stations pay 5% of net receipts plus varying fees, networks pay nothing, expire next December. Last month ASCAP revealed the terms of the next contract: 3%-5% for individual stations, 7 1/2% for the networks. Radio paid a total of $4,300,000 last year, would pay as high as $8,500,000 (its own estimate) in 1941. Last week the two major networks, CBS and NBC, gave their answer: nothing doing. For the first time they had a weapon with which to hit back.

Founded last fall, with stock owned by broadcasters, was Broadcast Music Inc., a music pool intended to rival ASCAP (TIME, Sept. 25). Last week B.M.I, issued its first catalogue: six songs, (sample: We Would Make Beautiful Music Together) which to many a broadcaster sounded sweeter than any of ASCAP's.

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