ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Producers) and BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) are "performance rights organizations" whose purpose is to collect royalties for copyright holders of music for live performance of their material. They each perform essentially the same function, but some copyright holders have registered their music with one group and some with the other. ASCAP and BMI will be referred to as "PROs" herein.

US Copyright Law requires that venues which produce live music must pay a royalty to the copyright holder of any song performed at their venue. Rather than trying to track down and collect royalties from every venue in the country, most copyright holders register their music with one of the PROs. The PROs license venues to present songs in their catalog for a standard fee. At the time of this writing, that fee is set at 0.8% of ticket revenues. There are currently five departments whose presentations would be subject to these fees: Troubadour, Open Stage, Special Concerts, Getaway and Events Hosting (a.k.a. Member Events). The assumption is that Swingin' Tern presents only traditional and original music, and Horses Sing None of It has a standard contract that restricts its performers to present only traditional music or music performed by the copyright holders, who are empowered to waive any fees.

Each department is required to submit a report to the Treasurer at the end of each quarter enumerating every concert that took place during that quarter under the Department's auspices. This report documents the admissions money collected, and the resultant royalties due to each of the two PROs. (i.e., two reports for each quarter from each department.)

The PROs supply blank forms on which to make those reports (available at their respective websites), although some departments have created their own equivalents of those forms in order to be able to produce reports directly from their own databases. Blank copies of these forms are attached below. Note that the ASCAP spreadsheet did originate with them, but has been tweaked a bit for our use.

The Treasurer compiles all the reports from the departments, totals all the fees, and submits the reports and a check for the total to each PRO by the 15th of the month after the end of the quarter. In addition to the fees, ASCAP (but not BMI) will accept optional set lists of music performed, so as to calculate any royalties due to its members for the performance of their music. (BMI relies on the copyright holders to submit their own set lists.)

The reportage for the departments responsible varies somewhat from one to the other.

• • Special Concerts and Events Hosting are pretty straightforward. Their fees are calculated directly by applying the formula to the income from ticket sales.

  • Troubadour and Open Stage are the same, but with the caution that money coming in from the Creel (at the Troubadour) and as donations (at Open Stage) is not considered part of the ticket sales. These venues apply the formula only to the money that comes in as Admissions..

  • Getaway only applies the portion of the registration fee that goes toward the concerts. The portion of the registration fee that goes to housing, meals and workshops is not considered applicable to the PRO fees. Getaway will determine that portion.

As of this writing, Mike Agranoff is the liaison between the Folk Project and the PROs.

Also note that as of October 2017, house concerts produced by the Project's Special Concerts team are being produced in conjunction with Folk Alliance International and are under the umbrella of their House Concert Series. We have been informed by FAI Staff that we do not need to report these concerts to ASCAP or BMI.