The Harry Fox Agency in New York handles the administrative work of
licensing and collecting mechanical royalty fees for many publishers
in the U.S.  Sometime between April 1996 and December 1996, they've
implemented a policy change that will hurt the player piano roll trade.

Section 115 of the copyright law says that once a musical composition
has been set in a recorded medium and offered for sale, then the
publisher must allow anyone else to record the work and offer it
for sale.  The publisher receives about 7 cents per unit sold as a 
mechanical royalty.  As I understand it, the intent of the law was
to allow the "little guy" access to new compositions.

When I sent in my last batch of license requests to Harry Fox, instead
of the usual licenses, they returned an invoice, asking for a non-
refundable pre-payment of $34.75 per composition to cover the first
500 copies of each recording.  The accompanying letter said that the
500 unit minimum was as directed by the publishers.  I agree that
$35 doesn't sound unreasonable to cover all of their administrative
overhead, but here is an example:

One of the new rolls in my catalog had four tunes on it and sold for
$14.95.  Under the new plan, the royalty on those 4 tunes would be $139.
My entire production for that roll was 20 copies.  That works out to a
royalty of nearly $7 per roll, compared to 28 cents per roll under the
old policy.  This will adversely affect every small producer of piano
rolls who are doing works that are not in the public domain.

I don't know if this 500-unit minimum represents a change in the
copyright law, or if Harry Fox is just doing this on their own.  If
they are doing it on their own, then one should still be able to write
to each publisher requesting the mechanical license and still pay the
lesser rate, without minimums.  I can't believe that the publishers will
enjoy the onslaught of license requests that result in $1 of royalty.

Bill Jelen¶
Akron, Ohio

 [ Our member Stephan Kent Goodman is both a composer receiving
 [ royalties _and_ a tremendous fan of mechanical music.  Perhaps
 [ he can tell us more about this important development. -- Robbie