I'm not sure how the system works "down under" that Graham speaks of, nor do I readily know how the money received by PROs in the U.S. is divided amongst it's members.
I *do* agree with any concepts of a system which would truly pay an artist each time his/her song was performed by another. It would be a complex system, yet fair.
The rewards for writing/creating songs & music that others want to hear and perform should be there, and should be accounted for.
But when a generic mathmatic formula is applied, and standard fees for venues are adopted as a matter of legal policy, we have lost all true accountability. Well, we haven't lost it because we never had it.
The entire problem with the laws of our society is that of creating laws which try to serve every entity and every situation equally. It's a simple fact such laws cannot be written, and efforts to do so plague us with unfairness, both horrid and laughable tales of strong-armed victimhood, ridiculous scandals and wastes of public and private monies....not to mention further laws written on top of existing ones, and further bureaucracies developed to to handle all of it...more people being hired to control the complexities of handling money and laws to the point their own paychecks devour every dime of the money they are handling.

And the people who get ripped off are always the people whom the laws were designed to serve...the people who actually pay to be part of such a system.

I simply don't see a fair answer to the issues of venues and cover songs coming from the existing system. I don't see any sign that artists truly get paid for their songs being covered, nor that they will. I simply see a non-governmental bureaucracy (completely dependent upon government)collecting money via floppy and ill-fitting concepts of law.

-Gary