Do you have a PRO on your side?

As a musician, you need a PRO in your corner. Do you have one? Do you even know what a PRO does? Having a PRO is important to receiving all of the royalties you are entitled to so knowing what they are and what they do is vitally important.

A PRO is a Performance Rights Organization. In some countries, they are referred to as copyright collectives or copyright collecting agencies. Their basic purpose is insuring that the recording artist receives the money they have earned through performance royalties.

In the United States, there are three main PRO's. These are the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) and the Society of European Stage Authors & Composers (SESAC). Recently, a new comer has entered upon the stage; a controversial non-profit performance rights organization that calls itself SoundExchange.

As a recording artist, when you or your music publisher registers one of your songs with a Performance Rights Organization, you insure your future performance royalty payments. These payments are issued for every single digital download, radio broadcast, television and movie use, business background music, ring tone or cover band performance of your song.

The PRO handles contract negotiations, as well as collections and disbursement of performance royalties, for these copyrights. These fees are set at a cap by the current U.S. copyright laws and they are adjusted occasionally to reflect the current needs of artists, song writers and composers. At present, the royalty fees to use another persons music for CD and digital download are set at $0.091 for songs 5 minutes or less and $0.0175 per minute or fraction thereof for songs exceeding 5 minutes. Ring tones fees are set a flat rate of $0.24 per copy.

Now that you know what a PRO is and what it does, it's easy to understand why you need one in your corner.


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