If you're "making a living from someone else's songs", then you are by definition using their property for your own profit. I might loan a friend my truck to move to a new house, but if he wanted to use it to make money moving other people's stuff, I think maybe he ought to pay me for it. I don't have to ask for it, but there's nothing wrong if I did. Unfortunately, in most cases, writers have no way of collecting anything without the help of the dreaded BMI or ASCAP. I can't monitor radio stations on the other side of the country to collect my 12cents per play. If somebody has a local hit with my song on the other coast, I would never even know about it if I have to check on it on my own. And I do let friends use my songs for free, but if one of them ever made a LOT of money, I assume they would pay me. It would be easy if Hootie and the Blowfish (my homeboys, by the way) had a top ten hit with my song, I would certainly know about it, but if the most popular lounge singer in Seattle far away used it as his theme song and sold a lot of his cd's largely because of my song, I would like to be paid. As for Barnes and Noble being unable to buy a license so they can have live music, that's ridiculous. The licenses don't cost that much, and B&N is a sufficiently huge business they could buy them if they even vaguely wanted to. If there is an alternative, I say again that I'd love to hear about it.

Chet W.