Ascap revenue tops $1B in 2014

Music licensing agency the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, more commonly known as Ascap, reached a milestone of over $1 billion in revenue in 2014, according to the New York Times.
 
After expenses, the performance-rights licenser paid an estimated $883 million to member artists in 2014, up 4 percent from the previous year.

The New York-based not-for-profit organization, which collects royalties when one of its over 500,000 member’s 10 million songs are played, reported 500 billion such uses last year. That is double the number of performances tracked by Ascap in 2013.

Despite the long perceived threat of Internet piracy to the financial viability of the music industry, Ascap saw a major jump in the use of on-demand online streaming music services last year to the tune of a 54.5 percent increase over 2013.

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