I don't know how it is in other countries, but I think part of the problem in the US is that music royalties on live performances are charged against the venue, since of course there's simply no way of following every performer around to see what songs, the rights to which are owned by other people, the performer performs at each gig. Any venue that has music for the public, live or recorded, has to pay license fees to ASCAP and BMI, or at least is supposed to, based on the seating capacity of the venue, I think. (And, as I understand it, those royalties are disbursed to the songwriters on the basis of the amount of radio play, not live performances. So if you're a songwriter who has written songs that are getting sung by every would-be folksinger in every bar in the country, but are not getting played on the radio, other people get your money.)

So if a small venue hires as entertainment a singer-songwriter who does his/her own material, exclusively, they can refuse to pay license fees on the basis that the performer owns the rights to all the material that's being performed, and has waived royalties in consideration of getting paid to perform. At least that's the way I understand it. I know that some venues will only hire singer songwriters that do only their own material, and I think that's the logic involved. I've been wrong before, once or twice in the far dead past.

The interesting thing is that the same scam should work if the singer did all traditional, public domain stuff, or a mixture of his/her own songs and P D material. But I guess it doesn't. Of course so many figpuckers have copyrighted traditional songs that it's hard to tell what's PD anyway.

Peter.