On Sat, 2003-02-01 at 10:34, Ray Davies wrote: This is done in the name of noise and saftey (although existing laws could be applied) but things like playing recorded music or showing a soccer on wide screen tv are exempted even though they can be more noisey, a
football
Here in Belgium it's rather the other way round. For live performances, a fee should be payed to the Belgian society of authors, composers and publishers (SABAM -- I told about this in some previous posting, I believe). If SABAM distributed all these fees among the composers fairly (which it doesn't), that would only be just. When the band performs only traditional or public domain music, you don't have to pay at all. However, the performance and the playlist should be reported to SABAM.match on tv can draw more people into a pub than a few accousitic folk musicians, etc.I fear that many pubs will not ask for live entertainment to avoid hassle and I fear for the future of our music. I'm also quite disgusted with the way the law gives unfair advantage to those already with power and money.
For playing recorded music, on the other hand, we're screwed twice. First, there's the fee for the composers (collected by SABAM). But last year, a new law was passed that introduced *another* fee that goes to the performers, called the 'fair compensation'. The idea is that performing artists put some effort in recording stuff and should be compensated for it. The fair compensation is collected by another society.
This means that a pub owner here has to pay nothing for a band that plays a traditional set, but he has to pay *twice* for playing cd's! Same goes for societies that organise events (a festival, a ball, etc.)
bert
--
Bert Van Vreckem
If Bill Gates had a penny for each time Windows crashed...
Wait a minute! He does!
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