Lyle Greenfield, president/EP of New York City music prodco Bang Music, is frustrated by technology. Actually, let's amend that. He's not frustrated by technology itself, but by the seeming inability of American performance rights organizations (PROs) - groups such as the non-profit American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), and the privately-held, for-profit SESAC that issue licenses for public performance of music and collect fees accordingly - to utilize new tech advances and pay commercial music composers and publishers what he, and a growing number of music houses, feels they deserve.

Despite Greenfield's current frustration, the myriad issues surrounding payment for spot music have been stewing for decades.

In 1981, jingle-writing legend and ASCAP member Steve Karmen (the man who penned "I Love New York", "Aren't You Glad You Use Dial" and "This Bud's For You" among others) made noise about what he deemed to be inadequate compensation. With the issue brought to the fore, ASCAP in turn raised the weight (the rate used to compensate different types of music) for jingles from 1% of a "use credit" (the payment measurement per minute of song) to 3%. Although many jingle writers contended it wasn't enough, at least there was movement on the issue. And in 1997, when ASCAP proposed setting aside 10% of funds raised in TV broadcast fees for its commercial/promo music members, those affected viewed it as a cap and a new organization - the Association of Music Producers (AMP) - was formed by music and sound design prodcos who felt there'd be strength in numbers. AMP members, then numbering at about 30 companies, teamed up with members from the Professional Composers of America (PCA) and after conducting meetings with ASCAP, the 10% policy was scrapped.

Fast forward to 2006. AMP has grown to 103 member companies. And while most concerned will say there has been progress with certain issues, there is rising concern in the community regarding the monitoring processes employed by PROs. While ASCAP, BMI and SESAC have all trumpeted recent achievements in utilizing electronic tracking technology, the fingerprinting methods currently employed, such as ASCAP's MediaGuide, are regarded by commercial music makers as song-centric.

"The moment you alter a track, either by putting a voiceover on top or by editing the track somehow, the fingerprint goes away," says Groove Addicts founder Dain Blair, a member of AMP's board. "Another problem with fingerprinting is the actual detection times," says Mike Dowdle, president of both production music library Non-Stop Music and the Production Music Association (PMA). "[The PROs] had a hard time getting it to the point where it'd be detectable for even under 10 seconds. Many times you'll have pieces of music that can be three, five or seven seconds long."

Thus, AMP, the PMA and others in the field are pushing for the use of "more robust" watermarking technology, such as the monitoring systems made by San Diego-based Verance, a company specializing in broadcast verification and digital audio watermarking technologies.

"There are several technologies that could accomplish this," offers Greenfield. "This isn't brain surgery anymore - the brains already figured it out half a decade ago, so I'm a little cynical about the resistance at this point."

Some music houses are paying to watermark their catalogues themselves, comparing the electronic info they receive to the quarterly statements received from the PROs, often derived by standard survey and sampling methods, including cue sheets and census. "In watermarking, up to a certain point, you can embed a tremendous amount of data within an audio signal, on many different levels," explains Dowdle. "Fingerprinting doesn't have that capability as it's more linear in nature...as a result you have a limitation in the amount of data and therefore the uses."

Dowdle sees improvements on the horizon. He notes that BMI has recently formed a new subsidiary, Landmark Digital Services LLC, that will exploit a new pattern recognition technology called BlueArrow that, according to a BMI press release, "achieves extraordinary accuracy, even in high-noise environments, after detecting audio for as little as one to two seconds." All three PROs continue to meet with AMP and the PMA to discuss tech and rate issues - a meeting is scheduled for this year's NAB conference in April. (While all three PROs were solicited for comment for this article, none had provided any by press time).

"One of the things AMP has on its agenda is to engage the advertisers," says current AMP president Jan Horowitz of David Horowitz Music Associates. Indeed, a visit to the website of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) shows several meetings in the last year addressed issues of fingerprinting commercial music and recently reduced weighting rates from ASCAP.

"The only thing we know is that the technology exists to fingerprint and/or watermark, and track," says Horowitz. "If there is a will to do it."

Association of Music Producers> http://www.ampnow.com
Production Music Association> http://www.pmamusic.com
ASCAP> http://www.ascap.com
BMI> http://www.bmi.com
SESAC> http://www.sesac.com