I see what you're all saying, and you have good points when you apply your arguments only to the small-scale operations we usually find in the folk world.

But the royalty system has to work right across the board, for everything from Alan's CD to The Sound of Music.

Alan says: "I would argue that demanding royalty payments for live performances is a nonsense, and a dangerous nonsense at that."

Well, suppose you're a professional company putting on, say, Evita. The written work is fairly crucial, for without it you'd have nothing to play. So it's completely right that the writers should get their cut in this case.

Now bring it down a peg, to a smaller show, by someone less famous, it's still right that the writer should be paid. Then bring it down to Garth Brooks covering one of your songs, still right, then back to me singing your song? You see? Once you establish the basic principle you can't draw a line and say, this should be free and this shouldn't, because there is nowhere fair to draw that line.

Writers, like all artists, make something that is potentially worth money (whether they choose to think in those terms or not makes no difference), and using someone else's work to make money for yourself without paying them is no less than stealing. Ok, in the folk world sometimes no money is changing hands. But the potential is there for income, because the performance will have value, and it has only been the performer's decision not to charge that has prevented any money changing hands.

Alan, your post above only relates to a situation where the performance is by the writer him/herself. The system is designed for the far more common case where artists are covering other writers' works. If you sing your own stuff you absolutely deserve both portions or the royalty.

And if you don't charge a small amount every time a song is performed, how else can you calculate the value? You can say, we'll only charge every 100th time, but you've still got to count the performances, and then you have to pay a figure 100 times greater. So you might as well make a small charge every time.

Actually, of course, this is impossible, but the PRS and other authorities have various ways of trying to make sure the system is as fair as it can be - such as the gigs and clubs scheme which pulls in a fee from even the smallest club or session (from the venue's music licence).

Having a membership scheme as we do with Radio Britfolk is not payola, and it's certainly not illegal. Payola is illegal because it is covert and therefore unfair and misleading. But people can openly sponsor their own tracks (this is just advertising) and buy extra features without any problem at all.