The USA is quite unique in that musicians have a choice of collection agencies. This provides a better solution for artist’s because since there is a choice this suggests the fees for signup and efficiency of operations In collecting the music royalties should be better than other countries were effectively there is a monopoly of one collection agency.

However for businesses this means more complication in that they may be playing music from all the collection agencies and so need a license from up to three collection agencies at any time. Added to that there are regular stories of heavy handed visits, pestering phone calls and letters threatening legal action, all of which is obviously unpleasant for any business to receive.

Not all the US agencies subscribe to the same assertive pressure on businesses however since they represent named artists and copyright holders they do all have the right to collect royalties for use of their client’s music in business environments. How they calculate this can be at times very complicated. For example at the time of writing this article, ASCAP publish the following method to explain how they calculate how much you as a business should be charged for using their client’s music:

“Use Weight x Licensee Weight x ‘Follow The Dollar Factor’ x Time Of Day Weight x General Licensing Allocation”

added to and where applicable…

“Radio Feature Premium Credits”

plus where applicable…

“TV Premium Credits”

The latter is only used for where TV shows are being shown in your location.

Whilst it might be tempting to try to match the way ASCAP and others calculate a license fee based on and exclusively to, the physical size of your business, Melody Pods wants to make things much simpler. We license our music per device. So whatever the size of your business location, the subscription fee is simply the same. You are playing the same music in a small restaurant as you would in a large warehouse after all.

And of course it doesnt matter to use when you use our music, so we would never dare to charge you more for using our music in the evening as opposed to during the day for example.

Additionally, if you roam in your business, you take the right to use our music to anywhere you do your business.

Calculating these complex costs, and then monitoring and collecting these fees based on the usage simply means business are paying a lot of money to a society for administration knowing full well that a large part of the fee never gets back to the artists concerned.

Melody Pods provide a simpler way to license music that doesn’t require many foot soldiers to walk the streets checking usage, and offices of administrators billing and distributing licenses. We automate all that so that our costs, and the price to you becomes sensible and sustainable for businesses and artists.

Hence Melody Pods provides a simpler, easier and cheaper way to overcome these complications; a single source of professional music at a great price per month. So no need to pay a full annual fee suddenly hitting a business’ cash flow. Our service also provides invoices and license documents that can be shown to any pestering royalty collection agency. You should expect you will be pestered but after a while it will sink in that you do have a fully legal supply of music, you are paying the royalties due to the artists directly to Melody Pods and that if you only use our music collections you are not using any other music they may have the contract to collect performing royalties for.

Melody Pods. Simple, affordable good music.