how can a thousand dollars be chump change to a coffee shop operating in the red? hell, to anyplace that\'s operating in the red?
what if all i do is play, say, jackson browne covers at the coffee shop and i\'m the only person who plays covers at that coffee shop and that coffee shop does, in fact, pay its dues. can be proven that jackson browne is getting all the money paid to ascap or whomever? and if not, how can that company then argue that it is enforcing for that artist?
seems to me that, rather than enforcing century-old laws in a manner sure to produce an even worse reputation for an industry already looked at as evil, they\'d perhaps work on coming up with some way to deal with this issue in the 21st century. because, if they haven\'t been able to figure it out yet, their efforts so far are causing the death of their own industry.
is the extra few dollars a night (and in a coffee house, it is literally an extra few dollars) brought in by those folks playing covers really worth the bad press? or do you charge, say, clear channel, more than the coffee shops? that\'s one thing that wasn\'t clear in the article - does the fee change according to venue size, amount of live music, etc? if so, again, it should place the onus of costs on the real clubs, etc. so much so that going after the couple hundred bucks from a place that doesn\'t even make that much from its music doesn\'t make financial sense.
now, i understand that most of these laws are for the protection of the songwriters and not the performers. like, no money at all is going to britney, but a bunch is going to the people who actually write her songs. and that seems perfectly fair. but how the hell can you say, at any venue, who got played how often without literally having someone sitting in every single venue in the entire nation? and if they aren\'t doing that, then i would imagine a half-way decent lawyer would be able to poke holes in their \'enforcement\' techniques. sure, what they\'re doing is legal, but are they treating every single venue the same? and if not, doesn\'t that show unfair bias in enforcement?
