Radio program bumper music

[alerich]

I was driving back to Atlanta this morning from NashVegas and I was flipping through the AM dial looking for something interesting to listen to. I happened upon a talk radio station that was featuring some conservative talk show the host of which I had not heard of and whose name I cannot recall. The topic at hand when I tuned in was gun control (which is not relevant to my post). At the end of the segment the bumper music leading to the commercial break was "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac. I thought it odd that the same song Fleetwood Mac gave Bill Clinton permission to use during his presidential campaign was being used by a conservative talk show. The next show up at the noon hour was Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh has long used "My City Was Gone" by The Pretenders as his bumper music. I never could understand that one. I cannot imagine Chrissie Hynde approving of Limbaugh's choice of bumper music. I am confident that the Mac would not be too enthusiastic about the former example, either.

I did a little reading about bumper music and it appears that you purchase a yearly blanket license from ASCAP/BMI for such purposes then you track and submit logs to show what you played. It did not mention securing specific permission for a given tune. You can only play a short snippet like 30 seconds or less and I've never heard actual lyrics played in any bumper music, now that I think about it. I'm guessing it is handled similar to those licenses bars are supposed to have if they feature bands or DJs that play copyrighted material where the money goes into a pot and is split among all members. I can recall seeing the decals on bar doors back in my playing days but they were never current.

If anyone has a more in depth knowledge of the bumper music scenario can shed some light on it for me I'd be grateful.

[PRR]

ASCAP policy is opaque.

Radio stations usually take a "blanket" license which allows them to play any ASCAP music without negotiation. (Technically the "blanket license" is illegal, but I gather most stations play one fee for all plays.) While I have heard of play logs I don't think they were widely done in the 1970s (today play-lists are all computer and could be submitted); this may be eye-wool to evade the no-blanket ruling. I had thought that pay-outs to songwriters were based on record sales, not air-play; and their traditional two-tier system meant that top-1000 writers got significantly more pay-out than less-popular writers.

BMI was founded in reaction against ASCAP monopoly and exclusivity. Their policies are less hidden, but they don't bother to explain them well. BMI does say "blanket", which must be a different deal than the mandatory blankets which ASCAP was banned from enforcing.

I don't think the songwriters have any say in who plays their music, or how much of it. A blanket allows all-music DJ shows. Perhaps there is a lesser fee for talk shows which don't use as much music. I suspect the short instrumental-only clips are to suit show format and flavor, not any license restriction.
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And off-topic: the Happy Birthday copyright suit was settled but the settlement details are not public. This means nobody knows if it is safe to play HB in public. Analysis of the copyright history says it is 99.9% sure expired; but no single infringer wants to put-up the money to fight it all the way to a knock-out. You pay $1.5K to use HB in one movie, the owner collects about $2M/year and expects this to go until 2017 or 2030, so the money is all on their side.