Regarding Jed Marum's comments, I am in the US. We run our concert series not to make money, but because we love the music and want to provide a venue. Nevertheless, we have always managed to pay our performers the agreed upon fees, and we have had a few better known performers whose fees were not small. I know of several other coffehouse type situation where the same applies, and some have been in business a number of years. There have been occasions when they have dipped into their own pockets to make sure the artist got what they were entitled to. Of course no one has to take a gig and it's entirely up to the performer if their criteria is that they only want to perform at a place if the organizer is in it for the money.