c,

And, unconvinced you should be. It's not at all proportionate to the actual live performance of songs.

Other countries track the songs with lists, I believe their PROs are administrated by their governments, many have one PRO per country. We here have three PROs registering songs, and collecting and distributing fees. That makes it difficult to register and sort out the songs perfomed all over the country on any given week.

Even if we had one PRO, I would confidently guess that we have far more total live music performances in one week than any other country. The task is immense and the expense of trying to accurately track them would eat up the money collected. Right now the money goes to songwriters who are statistically shown to have written popular songs.

Meanwhile, venues are lobbying to have the laws concerning the collection of fees for live music performance reduced or eliminated. I believe that if these laws are eliminated or reduced, and in the future the technology allows us to accurately track performances, those laws will not be reinstated and songwriters will not be paid.

That's why I say, as it is now, let the venues pay for live music even if it gets distributed to only a few songwriters. I'd rather see a few big songwriters get paid now than see many smaller songwriters not get paid in the future.

That's my case in a nutshell.

Mike


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Mike Dunbar Music

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music