I think it could be partly due to a sense of community in English culture too. I usually sing & play in the bar, in pub sessions and particularly in the pub next door to my house where I'm a regular drinker.

All the people in the bar when we play music are part of that community and are therefore, within that environment, my friends and social equals. That's very much the nature of an English pub. Them offering me money (and me accepting money from them) in that context is just not acceptable in our culture. It'd be like offering to pay for a birthday present someone has bought you.

They can, as my friends and equals, buy me a drink (and it's perfectly OK for me to refuse, so long as I do it in the right way) but money suggests some form of buyer-seller contract. Where that exists, that's fine but it doesn't here.

I think it's very kind of you, Dick, to offer us this suggestion. The reason it hasn't universally gone down well, though, may be that - depending on the context - it would simply be culturally unacceptable in this part of the world.

We all have our own different ways of doing things and I think it's a good thing we do, so long as we can avoid misunderstandings because people don't or can't understand this.

:-)
Ian