Musician Drums Up Challenge To JASRAC Over Royalty Policy: Licensing Issues

JASRAC, Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, is again facing criticism. Recently it has received pushback from music schools and other establishments that use music, but now complaints from a musician supposed to benefit from JASRAC's monitoring of music use also is broadcasting his complaints that JASRAC is not clearly or appropriately giving royalties.

JASRAC tries to take a sampling of establishments like karaoke bars and music live houses and distribute general use fees (charged as flat rates to such establishments) as royalties to artists based on how much their songs were performed in the samplings. Rock band drummer Funky Sueyoshi has published his disappointment that he has received none of the royalties in spite of all the performing he had done over ten years and the procedure for distributions is "opaque."