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A guy who's never been here before came out after the show last night and as he walked past me he said, "I don't know if the music played before the show was your choice or not, but it was really great." He then walked right out the door and didn't give me a chance to reply.
It's difficult to please everybody with your pre-show music choices, but it's great when it's being noticed. So, now, I'm interested in what you're actually playing and maybe even what others are playing.
My personal best experiences are usually those where the pre-show music has been adapted to the show itself, although I can understand that this can be somewhat tedious if you're running a multiplex and it's not always easy to get hold onto the right music. Although in the current age of streaming, stuff should be more flexible.
My worst experiences are those where the kids "running" the show have personal control over the playlist and my second-worst experiences are those where the audio feed is just a radio channel, sometimes even including commercials...
I got tired of messing with a CD player (and then an iPod) to play music from, and then we started running ads so we didn't need preshow music. But then the ad company seems to have gone belly-up in the Covid era -- we haven't heard from them since Spring of 2020, so starting last summer I began making 30 minute audio-only DCPs off of the internet. I just use Audacity to record 30 minutes of music (some from specific playlists I create, others from whole LPs or just letting the music play). It's kind of cumbersome, but I can make these while I'm working at my day job and it's easy to load them on the system while I'm loading the new movie. It also works as a sound system test. And if I feel like we need to delay the show a bit due to a larger than expected crowd, it's easy to pull back the slider to add a few minutes of music before the actual movie starts.
Have you had any issues with music licensing? Or do you have a public performance license for the music? I know bars and restaurants are quite often caught playing unlicensed music.
I don't know the specific rules in the U.S. (maybe it's even different between states) or Canada, but they may be similar to what they are around here. Here you pay a flat-fee license for any establishment playing "background entertainment music", that includes bars, restaurants and other "entertainment venues" like cinemas. The fee you pay is based on the type of establishment you are and the effective surface area of that establishment.
For live entertainment or any entertainment where the music is the "main entertainment", there are special licensing requirements for that specific event and in some cases, you need to provide playlists, as royalties for those events are much higher. But for background music, you don't need to provide any playlists, so you can effectively play whatever you want, no matter really what the source is.
I think we are too "small potatoes" around here for the powers-that-be to bother checking.... or else they are "off work" when we are open in the evenings. (I had a health department inspector gripe at me one time because he had to make a special trip to inspect us while we were open. I said I'd be glad to open up for him in the daytime, all he has to do is call with about an hour's notice.)
In Canada there's an outfit called Socan that collects money for public performance of music. Movie theatres pay a an amount that's determined by the number of seats that you have.
When they first told me that I would have to pay to play background music in my theatre, I said I'll just not do that. Then they said that I would still have to pay because there's music that's included in the actual movies. I find it very difficult to believe that the movie companies don't acquire all of the rights needed to exhibit their movies when they make them (and in many cases the music publisher and the movie company are in fact the very same bunch).
For an outfit that does nothing but collect money (no goods or services are provided) they aren't very good at it. I've sent them cheques that they haven't deposited for six months and some that they never deposited at all. I fight with them over this stuff on a semi-regular basis, which really shouldn't be necessary but they're so amazingly incompetent that it seems impossible to avoid.
Incompetence in those kind of organizations seems to be pre-programmed. Their sole purpose is to collect money and divide it to the artists connected to their network, but they often fail at stage #1.
In the Netherlands, the drama starts at stage #0, as they're technically not one organization but three, although two of them apparently somehow have managed to "merge", but they all cover different royalties... The writing, the actual performance and the actual record... Yeah, you actually pay for those things individually... So, you end up with at least two invoices... They're also known for sending invoices first and asking questions later and they're apparently not always all that good in distributing all the acquired funds to the artists, producers and labels on the other side...
As for you needing to pay to them for the music in the movies... the situation is so convoluted, that judges often don't have the answer. You'd expect those royalties to be covered by the movie studios, as you pay them a hefty chunk of your admittance, but the fact that you pay that organization also means you have a contract with them. In that contract, they may say that you have to pay them for *any* music performed by one of the members they represent... So, if you don't pay them and don't play any pre-show or lobby music, you're probably fine and since you're paying them, you're probably fine.
Years ago (talking maybe 30) a representative from ASCAP came through town and hit all of the usual suspects. We used to play walk-in music and I wanted to be legal so I said sure, send me a contract, and invoice and where to send it. Never got any of that stuff. It was the days before internet and she didn't leave a phone number. If it was a scam, she was pretty believable, but I tend to think it was more incompetence. I've not heard from ASCAP since, and we don't play walk-in music anymore.
A few years ago I gave some of my Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ CD's to the former owner Jim of the Del Mar Theatre in Santa Cruz CA. These great stereo organ cd's sounded so great before the movie started when people came in with the waterfall curtains with red/purple lights. I sent them up tempo show tunes not slow church or classical type organ music. Unfortunately when the old owners of Landmark Theatres took over the Del Mar lease they did not play the rare pipe organ cd's I gave them and played some of the worst rock/rap junk before the movie started. The older people in the audience complained all the time.
Jim the former owner and his helper Scott even put together a special intro with a organ fanfare video tag and welcome to the Del Mar Theatre just before the movie started after the trailers with a separate drop of the curtains.
Now with new owners of Landmark and the Del Mar still closed pre show music of any kind is not heard.
Most cinemas run adds these days so they have no room for walk or exit in music.
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I have some friends that have put in stereo R/L speakers behind the former organ grills so It sounds like the old showmanship days of a organ can be heard. You can find a great selection of modern sounding pipe organ music not church or carousel sounding tunes doing a search on E Bay. Some of the classic older organ sounds may be in public domain.
Technically, you do have to pay the Performance Rights Organizations (PRO's). ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in the United States if you play music that clears through them. Most albums used to list the PRO for each track but because publishing rights change frequently these days, they usually don't bother anymore (even though the PRO doesn't usually change).
I don't know where movie theaters fall in the regulations and whether these PRO's bother to go after theaters, but the regulation for non-food retail and the like is that according the the Fairness in Music Licensing Act (HR789), If a retailer has less than 2000 square feet or more than 2000 square feet and <=6 speakers with <=4 in the same room and <=4 AV devices with only 1 in the same room and a TV <=55", then they don't have to pay. Same for food establishments with less than 3750 sq ft.
Public Domain: There are two parts to music copyrights: the recording itself and the publishing rights. For the recording itself, the only thing in the public domain are those recordings first published before 1923, those published from 2/15/72 to 1978 without a copyright notice and those recordings from 1978 to 3/1/89, published without notice and not subsequently registered. The earliest anything else expires is 100 to 110 years after publication and recordings from 1957 to 2/14/1972 expire on 2/15/2067.
For the publishing rights, it's the same as book copyrights: What's in the public domain is music published before 1926, that published between 1926 and 1977 without a copyright notice, that published between 1926 and 1963 with notice, but the copyright was not renewed, and music published between 1978 and 3/1/89 that was published without notice and not registered within five years. Mostly everything else has a term of 70 years after the death of the author, or if corporately owned, 95 years from copyright or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.
Imagine how many layers of crud we humans invented, only to keep hordes of lawyers and unnecessary overhead alive and kicking... If someone tells me they got the copyrights fully sorted, I tend to laugh into his/her face, unless they just spent 15 years in litigation about that very same thing.
Gotta take that copyright stuff seriously, especially when using any copyrighted music or other copyrighted/trademarked assets that are visible to a large audience -such as a TV commercial. I've seen local small-market TV stations get busted for using popular music in the background of commercials they produced. Stock music libraries are expensive. But not as much as getting sued by a company such as ASCAP or BMI.
In my line of work I see a lot of unauthorized use of brands. It runs everywhere between people selling Harley-Davidson logo decals at flea markets to some business literally ripping off part of a known trademark in his company name. There was a local counter top company that literally copied the "Hard Rock" part of the "Hard Rock" café logo into its name, Hard Rock Surfaces. We warned the business owner about it yet he insisted no one was going to care what someone was doing in little nothing Lawton. About a year or so later he got dragged into court by Hard Rock Café Int'l for trademark infringement. It was a quick open and shut case. I think the guy got found out via the web and image searches.
Even when you're using a large company's brand legitimately in graphics work it is pretty damned vital to follow their brand guidelines ("guidelines" is a nice way of saying "rules"). Logo alterations, color changes, etc can be cause for the offending work to be removed at franchisee cost. It doesn't happen all the time but we do have to shoot down requests from customers who want to screw around with a major brand they do not own.
Originally posted by Frank Cox
I have a variety of music ranging from Mantovani to 9 Inch Nails that I try to match to the movie that I'm currently playing. (No rap. I only play stuff that I can personally stand to listen to and rap ain't that. They left off the C.)
I've been a big fan of Nine Inch Nails for a long time. I used to listen to a lot of metal, but now it's mostly "alternative" rock. As far as rap goes, I can only listen to certain kinds of it. Rage Against the Machine is pretty good, but that has a healthy mix of hard rock. I'm the same way regarding country music; there's a LOT of it that I simply just can't stand at all, especially the newer stuff. But I'll listen to George Strait, Dwight Yoakum, Patty Loveless and a few others.
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