PEOPLE PLAY STUFF ALL THE TIME,” says composer-cellist Mark Summer of the Turtle Island Quartet, “but I’m not making money off anybody playing ‘Julie-O’ in a recital.” He ought to be. As the composer of the tune, Summer is entitled to royalties—at least a few cents—every time “Julie-O” is played by somebody else in a concert hall, in a bar, or on the radio. And since he recorded the song with Turtle Island, he should be collecting money every time that track gets played on the radio.

That’s the theory, anyway.

But who collects royalties for what material, and who pays royalties under which circumstances, and what happens in practice rather than in theory?

These are questions that can get as tangled as the loose strings in your violin case.

IN THE CLUBS

At least the situation is simple if you’re just a gigging string player, you’re not making recordings, and you’re only covering other people’s songs, rather than hoping to make money off your original material. When you show up at a bar or a concert hall and start playing, you’re free and clear, whether you’re playing some old fiddle tune that’s in the public domain (songs published before 1923) or a new song or sonata that’s under copyright.

That’s because it’s the business owner or concert presenter who must pay the licensing fees. If the bar owner claims that the fees are your responsibility, he’s either ignorant or lying, and you should contact the two major American performing rights organizations, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) to straighten things out.

For practical reasons, nightclubs, radio stations, and concert presenters usually pay a blanket fee rather than paying on a per-song basis, but that fee depends on a number of variables, like a club or hall’s seating capacity and frequency of performance.

IN THE STUDIO

Things get more complicated if you want to record somebody else’s song. To ensure that the songwriter can collect the royalties to which he is entitled, you may want to visit the Harry Fox Agency and secure for each song a “mechanical license”—that is, a permission to record. This isn’t necessary for songs in the public domain. Assuming you’re not going to print more than 2,500 copies of your CD (rates change over that amount), for each disc you’ll pay 9.1 cents for each song five minutes or fewer, plus 1.75 cents per minute or fraction thereof more than five minutes. So if you’re recording a song that’s five minutes or fewer, that’s a fee of $182 for a run of 2,000 CDs. Multiply that by the number of songs under copyright on your CD, and it starts to add up.

Similarly, if you want to sell (rather than just play) your own arrangement of somebody else’s song, you’ll need to make a deal with the song’s copyright holder. “I’ll never make money as an arranger off those Raymond Scott tunes on our new CD, Whirled Chamber Music,” says violinist Jeremy Cohen of Quartet San Francisco. “Scott’s estate makes the money. And that pisses me off the older I get.”

Don’t think you can get away with being a scofflaw. If you don’t pay up, a court can assess copyright-infringement penalties of $750 to $30,000 for each song infringed.

“Dude, if you start selling an album of Paul McCartney tunes and you sell a lot of records, somebody’s gong to knock on your door and say, ‘Where’s our money?’” Cohen says. “If you really seek success in the business, you need to play by the rules.”

Sometimes you can make a better deal directly with the copyright holder than by going through Harry Fox. “Every once in a while I get an e-mail saying, ‘I’d like to record your piece; what should I pay you?’” Summer says. “To be honest, if it’s like 100 copies of a CD, then for me it’s not worth worrying about.”

What if you’re the songwriter? Secure the copyright and then maybe you’ll start collecting royalties, not just paying them.

“Copyright is the real estate of the music business,” says Cohen. “That is where ownership lies. The trick is to get people to record your songs and pay you mechanicals.”

Write the song, register the copyright, and then record it yourself—even if you’re not as good as Mark O’Connor. Even if you’re not as good as Mark O’Connor’s cat. Because then you’ll be set to collect several different kinds of royalties, assuming anybody else wants to cover your song or play your recording on the radio or Internet (for which you get performance royalties as a recording artist), make their own recording of your song (for which you get mechanical royalties as a recording artist and/or composer), use your song in a movie or TV commercial (you get synchronization royalties as a songwriter), or just buy your sheet music (earning you print royalties as a composer).

ON THE PAGE

At some point—especially if you’re selling sheet music—you’ll probably hook up with a publisher, who will usually take 50 percent of your royalties. Then, there are all sorts of caveats and complications involved with getting money out of record labels. Performing- rights organizations get a piece of the action, too. ASCAP, for example, takes 12 percent for operating expenses. Furthermore, rights organizations can get months behind in sending out royalty checks.

And when the check does reach your mailbox, well, it’s more likely to cover a nice lunch than a Strad.

“When I get my BMI checks, I might have appreciable royalties, but they’re always foreign royalties,” Summer says. “For stuff in the United States, it’s just pennies.” Royalties related to the group’s many recordings can look substantial—until they’re divided among the present and most of the past members of the quartet.

“I’m happy to get several hundred dollars for the group,” Summer says, “but when it’s split up between 12 people, it’s not very exciting.”