[John N]

Sorry for the cross post - I wasn't sure where to post this at first so I posted it in the Moan Zone as well.....

OK, here's the deal, my wife and I perform regionally as an acoustic act doing almost entirely original material. Like a lot of singer songwriters we have day jobs and are getting to the point where we would like to put more emphasis on our music but the reality is that to gig at all we are dependent on cafes and coffeehouses and smaller listening rooms to make any money with music at all and almost all of our CD sales are at gigs.

So a gig just got cancelled because the owner of this little cafe in a semi-rural area outside of Boston had to suspend (if not permanently cancel) her Friday night music series because she was threatened by a lawsuit by a PRO (not sure which one yet). She is basically being told that she must pay hefty royalty fees on the assumption that covers will be played there. I guess it doesn't matter that this place is small, the musicians just get the hat passed and she can probably ill-afford the fees.

I promised this woman that I would let her know if I come up with any helpful information on how to deal with this so I putting it out there to the GS community.

I have my take on this and frankly I think it sucks for the little guy: the musicians, songwriters and the audience. These venues are going to fold or stop hosting live music making it all the harder to get gigs and sell a few effin CDs. I completely believe in IP and a writers fair share in monies made - I am, after all, a songwriter. But I'm a songwriter who is still trying to build an audience and get heard. This seems like one more example of corporate greed making it harder to get heard.

There's gonna be a lot of us on the other side of the moat and eventually we're gonna get our pitchforks and torches and fight back.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks
JN