[LINK] music industry goes after public performance

[Chris Gilbey]

Love all the idealism about people making independent CD¹s, rapacious
thuggery of content companies etc. That would be great!

Unfortunately the reality doesn¹t get anywhere near the rhetoric.

Here is how performance licensing works:

There are two licenses ­ one for the song and one for the master recording.

Any venue that has public performance of songs pays an annual license fee to
APRA for public performance of songs. The APRA collected money goes to
songwriters. It is normally distributed on a follow the dollar basis, except
that in the event of music being performed live, the artist is required to
fill in a Œlog¹ of songs played, and submit it, then that the appropriate
amount can be attributed to the songs actually played. Since a venue license
for a café is pretty low, that means that the amount to be reported for a
song would be close to zero in reality.

Tt doesn¹t matter whether a café has a live band or plays the radio or plays
CD¹s. They still pay an APRA license fee. No exclusions.

Something similar applies now for public performance of master recordings.
These are collected by PPCA. However in the event of there not being any
means to play recorded music, I can¹t imagine that there would have to be a
license and so live music wouldn¹t attract a fee. But if you were running a
gym or a café or a shop, what would you rather have - (a) silence, or (b) a
live act or (c ) the radio or CD? The last option is the most cost effective
if you want to have a sound track.... What hasn¹t been covered yet, which I
am tabling just so that people can vent against more potential rapacious
thuggery :) is the following:

If a venue produced its own pre-programmed selection of music, that was
hypothetically burnt on to a CD and then played because it set the right
mood, they would properly have to pay a fee for the replication of the music
and get a further license!

Same goes if you synch a piece of music to a video that you use in a
presentation in a conference....

Regards

Chris