Music Issues In The Air At ICAS

From ICAS...

For the 2005 air show season, the United States Navy and United States Air Force will require that any show hosting a military jet team or single-ship demonstration team obtain licenses from three different music licensing organizations to play pre-recorded music over the air show public address systems at air shows in the United States.

After several months of discussion, ICAS has negotiated comparatively inexpensive fees for ICAS members from all three organizations: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. BMI and ASCAP have both set their fees at $150 per day. SESAC has set their fees at $60 per show when the show is one or two days long and a sliding scale for shows longer than two days. In all cases, the fees do not include practice days. So, for a typical weekend air show, the total fees to all three organization will be $660: $300 to ASCAP for a two-day license, $300 to BMI for a two-day license and $60 to SESAC for the two-day show.

The music licenses issued by the three organizations will allow the air show to play any pre-recorded music at any point during the air show, including pre- or post-show "walking around" music, music played by a civilian performer to accompany his/her performance, and music played by any of the jet teams or military single ship demonstration teams.

These licenses are not optional and air shows that have played pre-recorded, copyrighted music over their public address systems without these licenses in the past have been in violation of US copyright laws.
 
ICAS took the lead in negotiating a special rate for ICAS members when it became clear that virtually all shows would be forced to obtain the licenses in order to host a military jet team or single ship demo. Some members were paying as much as seven times the negotiated rate before ICAS became involved.
 
"There really is no question that air shows are obligated to obtain these licenses and there never has been," said ICAS President John Cudahy. "The challenge for our industry was negotiating the best possible rate once it became clear that most members would be obtaining licenses beginning in 2005 and we think we've done that. For some shows, these ICAS rates represent a 70 or 80 percent savings on what they would have otherwise paid."

FMI: www.bmi.com, www.sesac.com, www.airshows.org