The ASCAP boycott was a 1941

boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...

of the

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

(ASCAP) by radio broadcasters, due to license fees. From another perspective, it was a boycott of radio broadcasters by ASCAP, "concerned about the unlicensed radio broadcast of its members' material ..." Between 1931 and 1939, ASCAP increased royalty rates charged to broadcasters some 448%. In 1940, when ASCAP tried to double its license fees, radio broadcasters prepared to resist their demands by enforcing a boycott of ASCAP, and inaugurating a competing royalty agency,

Broadcast Music, Inc. Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is a performance rights organization in the United States. It collects blanket license fees from businesses that use music, entitling those businesses to play or sync any songs from BMI's repertoire of over 20.6 milli ...

(BMI). It is currently the largest performing rights organization in the United States and one of the largest in the world. During a ten-month period lasting from January 1 to October 29, 1941, no music licensed by ASCAP (1,250,000 songs) was broadcast on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

nor

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

radio stations. Instead, the stations played songs in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

, regional music, and styles (like

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

or country) that had been traditionally disdained by ASCAP, resulting in many classical compositions being recorded by the big bands. When the differences between ASCAP and the broadcasters were resolved, ASCAP agreed to settle for a lower fee than they had initially demanded. "

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1854. Foster wrote the song with his estranged wife Jane McDowell in mind. The lyrics allude to a permane ...

", an 1854

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...

, was a notorious beneficiary of the ASCAP boycott. According to ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine, "So often had BMI's Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair been played that she was widely reported to have turned grey." Another beneficiary was

Glenn Miller Alton Glen Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band founder, owner, conductor, composer, arranger, trombone player and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Arm ...

's "

Song of the Volga Boatmen The "Song of the Volga Boatmen" (known in Russian as Эй, ухнем! y, ukhnem!, "Yo, heave-ho!" after the refrain) is a well-known traditional Russian song collected by Mily Balakirev and published in his book of folk songs in 1866. It was ...

References

Boycotts of organizations United States copyright law American music industry 1941 in radio 1941 in the United States

Boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...

1941 in American music Broadcast Music, Inc. {{Activism-stub

See also

References