As you may be aware, there are two major music licensing companies: ASCAP and BMI. When songwriters and publishers get their music played on broadcasts, they receive royalties. ASCAP was set up by artists and BMI was set up by the broadcasters. ASCAP randomly has people driving around, recording airchecks of radio stations across the United States in order to find out how to compensate their members. BMI did it differently. Since the broadcasters already had their own employees, it was those employees who were held responsible for reporting which songs were playing on the radio stations. In other words, the DJs had to do that.
This is what usually happened at KZZO in Clovis, NM: Once a year, we would get a large envelope from BMI. Inside were the logs on which we were required to write down every song that we played on the air over the course of three days. We also had to write down the names of every songwriter listed on the record label. This did not apply to just the BMI songs, we had to do this even for songs licensed by ASCAP. This seriously disrupted our ability to perform quality air shifts. Imagine yourself at your job. Now, imagine that you have the radio on and every time a different song plays, you have to stop what you're doing, write down the name of the song and the names of the songwriters. AND you have to be just as productive at your job as any other day in which you're not doing this. This is why all DJs HATED THOSE DAMNED BMI LOGS!
Usually, when we got the packet, we would find out that we had to start keeping a record beginning at midnight that very night. We never got them a few days in advance to help us prepare. The first thing the Program Director had to do was scramble and type up a list of every one of our current songs that we had on cart with the songwriters. This also applied to our Recurrents and any number of songs in other categories that we had on cart instead of a 45 or LP. This could take several hours.
So, if you were a member of BMI during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, what I'm about to describe will probably shock and outrage you. We usually had to fill in the logs over the weekend, when our part-time staff was mostly working. I wonder how many songwriters and publishers were aware that their compensation was in the hands of high school students who were making minimum wage. As this was also a pain in the butt for the full-timers, if there was a choice between having a good show and accurately filling out those logs, guess which they would choose?
Not to mention that most of the time, the logs were filled out by hand. Even though the directions ask for clear handwriting or typed entries, we didn't have a typewriter in the studio. It was in another room, so that would mean having to go out between songs and type stuff in. That sure didn't work. So, there's another question of how many people missed out on royalties because the BMI staff couldn't read the handwriting of the DJs.
Jid the owner used to tell about how they handled the logs in Dallas in the 1960s. They hated those logs just as much then, so they just took all the BMI songs from rotation for those three days. They hoped it would get BMI to start doing airchecks like ASCAP. I guess BMI didn't really care if that happened. It just meant paying their members less money. In 1995, I attended a panel on music licensing with representatives from ASCAP and BMI. The ASCAP guy said, at the time, if a songwriter or publisher got a song in rotation on KROQ in Los Angeles, they received $100 every time that song got played and caught on an aircheck. This was because of the size of the market. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area is also a pretty huge market. Just imagine how much money BMI members lost out on in the 1960s because their songs weren't played those three days on that station.
And there were also tales about air staffs that would just get together and make stuff up for the logs, trying to fill them out in a couple of hours without any regard to whether those songs got played. Since BMI didn't aircheck when the logs were being done, they had no way of knowing what was true and what wasn't. It also wouldn't surprise me to find out that there were DJs who did some songwriting through BMI. If their on-air handle and their songwriting name were different, they could get away with listing their own music on those logs and receive money for them. That's pretty sneaky.
I only ever had to do the BMI logs three times during my four years at KZZO. I don't know if we did them my first year there or if the reporting period actually happened to be during the weekdays. The third set of logs came in two months after the second go-round, which meant that the year had recycled and we had to do them again. The only difference this time was that BMI allowed us to write down the title and the name of the artist. We didn't have to write down all the songwriters who appeared on a single song. Imagine having to do that today when some hit songs have as many as six, seven or eight songwriters on them. I think that radio stations would just kill their transmitter those three days.
It was because of this experience that I decided to sign up with ASCAP when I became a songwriter and publisher. The only bad thing was that I still didn't make any money from that.
So they don't do the BMI logs any more. I found that out when I was working at the newsradio station in San Jose. I was having a conversation with one of the DJs from the country station and I mentioned the BMI logs. He said, "THANK GOD WE DON'T HAVE TO DO THOSE ANYMORE!"
It looks like someone finally came to their senses at BMI. Hopefully, that means their members have been receiving more money the past few years.
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