[Fmpro] ASCAP and Foreign Royalty Fee Disclosure

[Mark Northam]

Pete, I'll bet that if your bank started sending you statements without
their charges and fees they've debited your account with disclosed, you'd be
on the phone to them in a second. Or wait, would you "trust them"? I think
not. 

The ASCAP situation is no different. They know the numbers (they make the
deductions, after all!) and they choose not to disclose them on the
statements. It's as simple as that.

This is not about trusting ASCAP or not, it's about good business practices.
And good business practices say that if you accept and handle hundreds of
millions of dollars of incoming payments for others and you deduct a fee
from that money for these services, you should disclose the original amount
paid and the fees you charged on their statement.

And as I said, the fact that ASCAP also makes it impossible for its writer
members to communicate directly with the paying foreign PROs is yet another
violation of the rules of good business, as it makes it impossible to verify
or confirm that the correct amount was paid.

The entire foreign royalty thing is a big black box, it seems. Imagine, a
network of organizations collectively handling billions of dollars of
payment for others annually, where no disclosure or accounting is made to
the members on statements of the charges or fees charged by the
organizations, plus, they band together to make sure members cannot verify
the correct amounts paid by limiting member contact to the "home"
organization even when the money comes from abroad. Members are left to
"trust" that the numbers on their statements are correct, with no ability to
verify or confirm the amounts directly with the source.

Amazing.

Best,

Mark Northam



On 6/4/07 12:43 AM, "Pete" <musical411 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> They've already told me they have a 12% operating cost
> (pretty damn low if you ask me). Do I need to know the
> exact amount it cost to collect my 20 cents from an
> airing of the Osbournes in Britain?