The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #107588 Message #2231994
Posted By: johnadams
09-Jan-08 - 09:21 AM
Thread Name: PRS Performing Rights Gestapo
Subject: RE: PRS Performing Rights Gestapo
Bugger! I wrote a long reply and Mudcat swallowed it! Here goes again.
Tom Bliss wrote:
First off is that its not unknown for landlords to pay a few of the session leaders (even if only in beer) to make sure the thing happens and happens well. Plus a session is, from the landlord's point of view, an event which does generate revenue in terms of drinks sales. I wouldn't say that means it's right to demand a licence, but it is I believe one of the arguments put forward by PRS.
That may be so but I don't think that undermines my standpoint. Lots of oiling the wheels goes on in life and it doesn't all have to be regulated. I go to more sessions than anything these days, and they are mostly populated by enthusiasts sharing. In a pub near me they share poetry and stories and nobody charges them. OK, music has more of a commercial element to it, but it's not difficult differentiate between what's done for fun and what's done for profit and if there's a grey area, so what? PRS has plenty of grey areas elsewhere.
The second issue is that as I said earlier a great number of the tunes that are commonly played in sessions are in fact in copyright. Now, getting royalties to the estates of the writers is a different matter (assuming they even care - which many probably don't), but the licence money from sessions does at least go into the pot and some of it comes out again to deserving causes - so again it's not as straightforward an argument as one might think.
The session movement, and it is a movement with hundreds of participants, generally accept that tunes go into the public domain and dissemination and performance of them is welcomed. If the tunes are adopted and performed or recorded commercially or even if they appear in the background of a tv doc shot in the pub, then there is a fee payable. If some hen party sings the Birdy Song or whatever the present equivalent is, in order to entertain themselves or their mates, nobody thinks of slapping a toll on them. Music can have a free cultural existence alongside its commercial arm. If I hum a copyright tune in the street I don't pay anyone. If I move across the threshold of a pub, I should still not have to pay anyone. If I charge anyone to hear me doing it, then there's a fee. And that should apply to my few compositions as well. Simplistic, yes - but common sense.
The third is that there is no clear definition of a session as opposed to a club meeting, or a singers night, or a proper gig. Musical gatherings take place in many forms and may contain any percentage of copyright material, from 0 to 100% - and you might not know which till after the event (if anybody was bothering to keep count - assuming they even knew who wrote what and when). That's why PRS aim to collect on all gatherings, but keep the price very cheap (which it is, whatever grumpy landlords may say) and hope to share the money out as fairly as possible in the right general direction.
While I agree that this can be a grey area, PRS appear to have an inconsistent attitude to grey. At the other end of the scale there seems to be a lot of big boys hoovering up the royalties that should accrue to some of those at the bottom of the food chain. I know some comes back via PRS Foundation but conversations with one of the officers who I know leads me to believe that not a lot comes to our neck of the woods.
I'm willing to be swayed by other facts but from where I'm standing, while I support PRS and its overall aims, it's not doing the roots of music, as practised by thousands who will never get on a stage or record a note, any favours with its present approach.
J