"The music was great."

[Harold Hallikainen]

A lot of web sites get "nice letters" from copyright owners for unlicensed use of photos on their web site. One company I worked for got such a letter for a picture of a woman on the phone in the "customer service" section.

[Marcel Birgelen]

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.

About 22 years ago I worked part-time for an Apple integrator that also had a webshop back then, which was even before Apple started to sell their own stuff via their own webshop. Maintaining the webshop was part of my duties. We had, for the time, a pretty sleek corporate identity, which was made up out of about 4 blue colors in different shades. We were an Apple authorized reseller and we featured the "Apple Authorized Reseller" badge on the site, which I had adapted to the color scheme to fit in. The original badge was dark red on white and it clashed with the layout to the extend that it was outright ugly.

Even back then, as an Authorized Reseller, Apple expected a high level of professionalism from you, as in how you represent them. This included how you organized your store and also any webshop if present. You couldn't just launch your webshop, you had to have it approved by them.

Back in the day, those were the dark ages of Apple. Steve Jobs had just returned and it wasn't even certain if Apple was going to make it, although they had some new stuff going for them, like their new iMac. Still, they were as zealous about their "brand representation" back then as they probably are today, although to an extend that it probably hurt more than that it helped them. Because, even though Apple previously approved our webshop, one day, we got a stack of papers from one of their lawyers: We were misusing their brand and we needed to stop doing so, immediately. The "Authorized Apple Reseller" badge we featured, was in the wrong color and it had to be corrected within 48 hours or otherwise the sky was going to fall on us.

My boss called them, as changing it to that dark-red thing really would've been dead-ugly. Also, we told them that Apple themselves, previously OK-ed the design. But yeah, to no prevail: It had to be changed into the proper colors... or else...

You could go to court over this, but it was clear that this would've been a losing case and what would be the merits if we won? A better looking website? Also, we still somehow wanted to keep Apple as a friend, as our own business depended on that. So, we changed the badge into the "ugly one". Maybe we could've limited the impact by changing the design of the pages in such a way, that it wouldn't clash as much, but we only had "48 hours" and I also somewhat wanted to make a point.

About a month later, our Apple representative visited us. You may guess what one of his first remarks was: I visited your webshop again recently. Who came up with the idea to change that Apple logo into that ugly color? Please change that immediately, as it doesn't represent what Apple stands for and they may even pull their authorization of the webshop as an "Apple Authorized Reseller" entirely...

We ended up with a compromise, where we re-designed a pretty big part of the site so we could place the badge in a way, it was a less disturbing look...

[Jack Ondracek]

Years ago, I ran a small-market impersonation of a Muzak service (pre-satellite)... a central location, full of big tape machines, fed into a phone company central office, then distributed to business customers in the area. The PROs charged me a flat fee per customer, for which I could play anything without individual documentation of artist or title. The billing was simply X number of customers times X dollars... send it in and all's good. In nearly 10 years of operation, none of them audited my numbers, though they would have been welcome to. The fee, as I recall, was rediculously reasonable.
Later on, I contacted some of those same PROs, asking what category a theatre would fit in and, given the very limited total exposure of their music to the customer, what sort of pricing arrangement would be appropriate.

I have never been able to get a consistently straight answer from any of them. Last I talked with them, number of speakers, square footage covered, number of customers exposed all fit into the soup, but they all seem to be distracted by streaming, additional PROs coming into the market and constant legal battles over how much they can collect from broadcasters. I don't stir the pot often, but I have tried, and have yet to have one of them hand me a standard form that's designed for a theatre, indoor or out, or some arms-length equivalent.

(insert throws-up-hands emoji here)

[Frank Cox]

Just had my annual go-round with Socan (the Canadian music copyright outfit).

Their one and only job is to collect money -- they provide no goods or services or anything at all. I don't understand how an outfit whose sole and only purpose is to collect money manages to be so consistently incompetent at doing that.

If you had an idiot employee whose one job was to sweep the floor and he couldn't even manage to do that you'd probably get rid of him. But we can't fire these copyright outfits so they have no incentive to improve anything, ever.

I got a demand for immediate payment this morning for an invoice I've never seen. Turned out that they hadn't actually bothered to send the invoice to me.

Every year it's always something; how many ways can you find to screw up an operation that just sends out invoices and collects payments?

Nobody likes dealing with these copyright outfits but they seem to go to great lengths to make the whole thing as horrible as they possibly can.

Now I won't have to deal with them again for another year.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Did they request payment in gift cards?

[Frank Cox]

With them, nothing would surprise me any more.

I've had the *cough* pleasure of dealing with them for decades now and I could count they years on one hand when I've just received their invoice and paid it in the normal course of business. There's always something out of order and it's always a fight to get it fixed.

My theory is they have a manual there titled "47 ways to fuck stuff up" and each employee works down that list on a daily basis.

By the nature of that operation they have absolutely no incentive to solve any problems or make any improvements in their processes, so they don't. And those of us who have to give them money just keep on doing so.

The people there must wonder why everyone hates them but they never seem to look in the mirror to find out.

[Randy Stankey]

When I worked at Mercyhurst, there was a guy claiming to be from the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) who would lurk outside, in the parking lot, trying to weasel money out of our performers for "union dues" that he claimed was owed for the performance.

The guy had the balls to actually come inside the building and wander backstage and confront one of our artists! (Bill Frisell, IIRC.)
My boss did a facepalm when he found out that Frisell actually paid the guy!

We called Campus Police who followed him to a local bar where they found him, sitting inside, drinking with the money he just stole!

My boss had the school's attorneys send a letter to the AFM with a check enclosed, stating that accepting the money would cover Mercyhurst for all future performances and that if that so-called union representative was found on the campus again, he would be arrested on sight.

We never had a problem like that again!

[Dan Allen]

For our Cinema Series, I've played Cinema Serenade by Itzhak Perlman & John Williams for years. Folks ask about it alot, and want to know when I'll play it again if I'm not, I've probably helped sell quite a few copies of it. We do a variety of things besides movies, so we pay an annual fee to ASCAP and BMI if I'm not mistaken.

The way I once heard it is there's so many places to look into, that they focus on a particular type of business for however long it takes and make sure they're paying music royalties for anything playing in said business... Beauty salons one year, coffee shops the next, and on and on.