Karaoke Forums

My Friday gig just emailed and canceled as they got hit up by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC for more money than it was worth for them to keep karaoke. The show was a slow builder and had not quite taken off yet but was making enough money for them to pay me 25% off the till and me to be happy most weeks.

I respect the decision of the bar, I had talked to them about ASCAP et al and that you can fight back and get them to lower fees or change the model on which they are basing them but I'm guessing it was simple too much effort for too little gain at this point.

At least in the UK I believe you only get hit up by PRS For Music so you only deal with one agency.

The disappointment continues as I was just talking to another venue but said I was unavailable Friday nights! Well shoot (with a single i replacing the oo!) Yeah I know I'll go back to them and let them know but damn!

- Jonn

No chances are that was a reason to stop entertainment. ASCAP/BMI is NOT that much - it actually averages less than $5 per night for most venues. They must be hurting REAL bad to begin with. Sad thing is now they will not stop hounding them especially if they do any other kind of entertainment ie TV, music, radio, bands, dj, etc.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Lon,

They have canceled the live bands too as a result. They have the touchtunes jukebox which covers its own license and commercial directv which again covers its own license.

If it was $5 a night that'd be $35 a week which would have a significant impact on the bottom line for the 3 hour karaoke show just for one night. Or are you saying they go for $5 for each night of 'entertainment'?

I was thinking this before, but perhaps we need a little data from our employers on how much they pay to these people and how it was worked out. I feel that much like property taxes they come in with a high figure and you then have to prove justification for lowering it. They have the upper hand, since some people just pay the first amount, making it harder for others to negotiate a fair price. If we were able to help our employers by giving them data to negotiate with, we expand our marketability too!

- Jonn

Without knowing exactly how much you got paid , $35 per week would in normal situations be a BIG DEAL for a show taking in $150 per week. ( about 23% )

You may be able to ACCEPT REPSONSIBILITY of the ascap bmi fee for the KARAOKE and try to renogiate with them yourslef to SAVE YOU SHOW.
But I know what even a $25 per night cut in pay can do to a show.

If a bar cannot make that kind of a payment, then they are not doing something right and probably shouldn't have the entertainment to begin with.
The fees are calculated on how many nights, type of entertainment, size/seating capacity of the club, among other factors. Our club pays approx $5 per night - it seats 200 at cap.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I agree the bar must not being doing very well if they can't afford it. That's a shame.

They maybe shooting themselves in the foot though making the decision they did. They'll still have to pay something just for having televisions in the bar. The extra cash it costs to be covered to me is worth the revenue karaoke and bands bring in.

They may have gotten overwhelmed not understanding all the different mailings. I know when the bar I work at started getting them he freaked out because it just wasn't BMI/ASCAP hounding him. It was several others threatening and asking for money. If he was to pay all of them your looking at $5000 or more a year. Venues have to do their research and determine which ones they have to pay and make sure you're not being over charged. I can see how some venues would just think it's easier and cheaper to cancel entertainment.

It's always disheartening to lose a gig because of outside forces that have nothing to do with your abilities. I wish you the best.

_________________
[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

I'm not quite sure how it works in the States, but here in Canada, it's rather cheap and we only deal with SOCAN.

Background music :
Annual fee: $1.23 per square metre or 11.46¢ per square foot; half the annual rate for establishments operating less than six months per year. (In all cases, minimum fee of $94.51)

Karaoke Bars And Similar Establishments
Annual fee:
a) $191.24 for establishments operating with karaoke no more than three days per week.
b) $275.56 for establishments operating with karaoke more than 3 days per week.


So, for karaoke 3 days a week or less, it works out to just $15.95 per month and for more than 3 days a week, it's $22.96 over and above the regular fees. (You still have to pay the background music fee, regardless. Karaoke is just an "add on", as is the live music).

For Live music, it's
Annual fee: 3% of compensation for entertainment (minimum annual fee of $83.65).

So if you pay a band $1000 to perform for the week, it's only $30 you pay.
Hardly a huge expense.
I would say go back to your bar owner and maybe give them a hand figuring out the proper fees due. Break it down for him to a cost per month and perhaps he'll see that it's not as bad as he thought.
It could be like the others say and that are quoting high and expecting to negotiate lower. In any case, ASCAP, BMI, et al will not be going away, even if the owner has canceled all his music. They will expect payment for past performances.

$5 = ONE EXTRA DRINK.

The focus at this point should be this: How can we make up the extra he'll be paying? Not how can we pay out of what we're making now. There are marketing methods that don't cost an arm and a leg. If he/you are willing to go the extra mile, it is possible to pay for all his fees out of one night of karaoke....break it down for him. He may be having a hard time looking at a 'huge' fee.

Let me do a little reverse accounting here. If the rate it takes for most KJs to be "happy" is $150-$200 for a show, that would mean at 25% of the till, the total gross revenue for the bar is $600-$800.

Now that's gross. Factor in the cost of the beer/liquor/mixers, rent, labor, electricity, insurance and even things you might take for granted like ice from the ice machine, tanks of carbonic gas for the soda gun, straws, napkins, toilet paper. Not much net profit left. And if you're only doing karaoke one night a week, an extra $35 is not inconsequential.

It convinces me more than ever that some run of the mill neighborhood bars won't make piles of money with karaoke if it's the only entertainment they offer one night a week. Especially if the volume of customers isn't there the other 6 nights of the week. Karaoke isn't that hard to find for people who have never been to that bar to suddenly start going there.

If you think the gig is worth holding on to, you might offer to split the monthly fee with the venue, if it will help you keep the gig. Chalk it up as a cost of doing business, like printing songbooks.

If the ring was $600-$800 (pardon my voodoo economics if I'm totally off) something tells me this guy was already thinking of nixing karaoke. What do they ring on a non-karaoke night?

_________________
[font=Lucida Console]DangerousKaraoke.com[/font]
[font=Lucida Console]"Sing for the day, sing for the moment, sing for the time of your life!"[/font]

I don't get the reasoning at all... $5 a night for 365 days l= $1825 per year. The difference between a decent profit or not for a bar is $1800 in an entire yea? Let's say we double it for BMI and ASCAP and make it $3700 or so. Even there, I can't believe that paltry sum is the difference in making or breaking for an entire year for a full time business -- not unless it's some mom and pop operation where the owner is taking a nice fat salary out of the place in which case we're talking more about accounting legerdemain than actual profit and loss.

I do wish ASCAP and BMI would merge or form an umbrella group or something. It is a pain dealing with more than one group.

Ok. In the UK like the US entertainment has to be paid for.
Much bigger than karaoke is live football which can cost X as much to put on.
90% of the UK has hero worship to 11 men in shorts.
Will pay #45 GBP to watch them for 90 min.
I must be a very strange bloke...
I don't do men in shorts.

PRS in the UK 6 years ago cost #1200GBP per anum.
SKY sport cost #5300GBP per anum.

Go figure... I can't.

Pub trade in the UK is rapidly on the decline.
All through GREED.

Not the Pubs...
The corporates who lease the pubs.

Been there.
Done that.
Got the bankruptcy petition.
Kept the T-shirt.

Toi me ASCAP is a joke the karaoke companies already pay to do the songs and have them made..so the artist has already made money off of it...let it go....ggggeeessshhhh

That's a deal in Canada.... Here it is calculated by seating capacity. One club that I play in seats only 56 (that's right, fifty six, not 156 o 256) and their ASCAP license for karaoke twice a week is $386 per year. Add approximately the same for BMI and then again for Seasac and you're close to $1,200 per year for 2 days of karaoke alone. That's more like $11 per night of karaoke or $88 per month vs. your $15.95 per month.

How is a business making it if $1800 a year is a huge blow to the bottom line? I'm by no means RICH and by no means have the means to responsibly open my own bar, and I make about $1800.00 a month in my small business of karaoke working about 15 hours a week. If I could handle that expense pretty easily in my part-time job, how can someone responsibly own their own bar/restaurant without being able to handle that kind of expense?

Again, it sucks to have to pay that, but if you can't afford it, then there is your sign that your bar just isn't working out as a business!!!

_________________
C Mc
KJ, FL

That sounds like a deal Lonnie, but I'm sure that there are plenty of people here that don't realize that the $5/night is for 7 nights... or $35.00 per week, $140 per month and $1,680.00 per year.

(and true, if a club can't pay even this, they're most like on the edge of going out of business anyway.)

The manus pay copyright fees to reproduce, ASCAP is the license to actually publically play like in the bars (or any other public media delivery) - completely different.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Not only all the above but I believe all the fees are TAX DEDUCTIBLE. So the business gets most of it back in the end.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Lone Wolf, exactly, those fees are considered business expenses, just like buying music and equipment, vehicle and gas is for a KJ.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

So.. one of the three royalty people was asking for $1.95 per year per person of occupancy. Assume the others were asking the same. The venue has an occupancy of 180 which they never came close to during a 3 hour karaoke set from 9p to midnight. Based on my 25% take of the gross, the bar took between $150 and $600 for those three hours each week. Some of that business was already there before karaoke. The question is how much extra money (after cost of goods and staff) was coming in as a result of karaoke. From that extra money they then have to pay both me and music royalties.

I'd say it's possible that for a slow grower of a three hour show the bar may only be seeing $30-50 in extra actual profit. Once you pay for me and royalties it starts losing money just to do it.

Couple that math with the fact that the royalty rates were based on paying annually in advance and it may well be that the extra effort required to make the night more profitable and covers the fees just didn't match up with the return.

The venue has other issues in that it had to close at midnight where the bar across the county line less than 5 minutes away is open until 2am. That bar has a much smaller capacity but is always busier for karaoke so the economics make more sense for them.

What is interesting is the deceptive practices the BMI /ASCAP people used to try and glean information about karaoke at the bar, pretending to want to do a birthday party and also trying to get my details and details of other shows I do. Will they be trying to hit up my other shows (who I believe are all paid up)?

Jonn

That still breaks down to $6.75 per week. I can see how that would kill their business.


Most of the time (in my experience) they just look for karaoke signs on the building/club signs or ads on the web/print.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!