The Day Songwriters Started Getting Paid

On February 13, 1914, composer Victor Herbert and a crowd of fellow songwriters, publishers, and lawyers packed a room at the Hotel Claridge in Times Square and founded the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. More than a hundred people showed up. The problem they'd come to fix was simple and infuriating: copyright law protected sheet music sales, but paid composers nothing when their songs were performed live in restaurants, cabarets, and hotel dining rooms, even though those venues used the music to keep tables full and orders coming. The gathering elected publisher George Maxwell as first president and attorney Nathan Burkan as general counsel, then set out to prove performances, not just printed copies, deserved a paycheck. Three years later the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with them.