The ASCAP Organization
Terance Jackson The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is an American not-for-profit performance rights organization that protects its member’s musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music. The organization plays the role of compensating licensed artists for the public works. Many familiar stars today are affiliated with the organization, like Drake, Alicia Keys, Grammy award winning producer Alonzo Lee and many more. Most people would be surprised to know the organization does a lot of charitable things for the community. People involved with this organization are eager to give back to the community and make a change because they know they’re admired and looked up to by many people all over the world. The ASCAP organization was founded in 1914 by composer Victor Herbert to protect copyrights of the musical members that he was affiliated with. Ever since then the organization has been up and running helping to monitor the funds earned in the music industry. Just to give readers a better understand of the organization, ASCAP collects licensing fees from users of music created by their club members then, distributes them back to their club members as royalties. In effect, the arrangement of the product is a sort of compromise: when a song is played, the user does not have to pay the copyright holder directly, nor does the music creator have to bill the radio station for use of the song. In 2008, the organization collected over 933 million dollars worth in licensing fees and distributed 817 million in royalties to its members, with an 11.3 percent operating expense ratio. These numbers gradually increase every single year. Community service events is something that ASCAP takes pride in participating in, Every year members from all the country give back to their communities in various ways.