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Music Industry Shaking Down Coffee Shops
realjd writes with news out of Florida that music licensing companies are now hitting small bars and coffee shops that offer live music, even if only occasionally and even if the musicians don't get paid. One coffee-shop owner told musicians they can only perform their own songs from now on. "A restaurant owner who doesn't even offer live music was approached for payment for having the TV on while the Monday Night Football theme played. And if the owners pay up to one licensing company, all of the others start harassing them, calling four times a day, demanding payment too. It sounds like they don't even check whether any copyright violations occurred, they're just sending bills to any business that may or may not have live music."
I hope you enjoy your new silent USA.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The TV playing music on the TV being counted as a live performance is a joke, as are the speculative calls asking, "Do you ever play gospel music."
That said, I only have limited sympathy for:
The coffeeshop owner who makes more money, selling more drinks because live music brings in more customers when that benefit is gained from using other people's work.
The singer/songwriter who held down gigs by profiting off someone else's work. Despite the self agrandizing title of singer/songwriter, his own compositions are such that, evidently, no one wants to pay to hear them.
I'll be sympathetic to people who weren't in any way trying to profit from using other people's work. If you're selling more coffee or getting paid to perform and have upped your margins (albeit from unprofitable to profitable) by taking someone else's work and not paying, I have a hard time being sympathetic to you when you're finally caught. They're not even getting fined for the [potentially] years they've got away with it already, they're simply being asked, "If you want to keep profiting from someone else's work, you're going to have to start paying them too."
It's not like they're banned from playing live music. They're totally free to have singer/songwriters play their own compositions. Except they don't want to because they can't profit so much from it. Why's it OK for them to profit but not the people, who covered the costs of creating and popularizing that music in the first place, that they're now profiting from?
It's much the same as my line of work: I use PhotoShop daily. It costs a small fortune for private individuals. The flip side is that we can probably make that cost and much more back because we use it. If we aren't willing to pay, there're free alternatives like GimpShop out there. I've got respect for those who pay for the better tools and try to turn a profit. I've got respect for those who cut margins by using the free tools and try to turn a profit. I've got very little respect for those who try to improve their margins, while getting all the same benefits, by pirating PhotoShop. If Adobe releases a new version that they're convinced they need but can't steal anymore... cry me a river for their losing their business model of trying to profit by taking other people's work for free without their consent.
About the only unfairness in this is the perception of unfairness: That you can likely get away with gaming the system for years so when you do finally get held accountable, it seems that much more arbitrary and thus unfair. Then again, is that genuinely unfair or is it just the perception of unfairness and frankly your issue to get over?
The same happens with speeding tickets. I can drive at 65 and never get a ticket. I can drive at 85 and get places faster, 999 out of a thousand, benefiting from that. The one time in a thousand I get caught, it feels so unfair that I now have a couple of hundred bucks in fines to pay off. Yet I don't bitch about it - I get on and pay. If I don't want the risk anymore, I'll stop trying to game the system. If I do try to game the system, I'll suck it up when I do get caught and recognize the unfairness is in my perception, not a system I knowingly flaunted for a long, long time.
So, for something as ridiculous as charging for music played on a TV, yeah, it's a joke. For bitching when you try to make more of a profit (or less of a loss in the case of the people who can't figure out how to run a profitable coffeeshop in the first place) by profiting off someone else's work... suck it up when you're finally asked to pay or move to the free option that, admittedly, won't let you profit in quite the same way anymore.
Indoubtably, any "classic" performed by a cover band is going to be mutilated to the point where what you really want to do is throw sharp heavy objects. Let these hacks save the cover tunes for when they are playing a real gig, in a real performance venue and are getting set to play their encores.
ASCAP licenses should be no surprise to anyone anymore.
The bands should know better and be aware of the problem. The cafe proprietors should know better and be aware of the problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The similarity is in the fact, that you are not really devastated by those e-mails. You are simply worse off. All the nasty things, that you rightly wish upon the spammer, do not compare with the inconvenience of having to press Delete even 100 times.
Similarly, each individual infringement by a small coffee shop does not cause the songwriters any "devastation", as the sarcastic "frosty pisser" was saying. It just makes them worse off...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.