[timewarp2008]

On May 27, 5:00*pm, "Bill Graham" wrote:
John Williamson wrote:
Bill Graham wrote:
John Williamson wrote:
Bill Graham wrote:
Ben Bradley wrote:
On Mon, 23 May 2011 08:18:15 -0700, Rick Ruskin
wrote:
If he wants free music to perform, he should write some and give
it away.

* It's enough to make one go baroque.

Otherwise, he should shut the **** up.

That music was written like 60 years ago. The people who wrote it
are all dead and gone. BMI has no business collecting a dime for
any of it. It should all be in the public domain. Instead of a
fixed year, (like 1927) the year before which music enters the
public domain should go up a year every year. Maqybe 1927 was a
good cut-off point 30 years ago, but today it should be 30 years
after that, or 1957. If BMI collects money for its performance,
then who do they give that money to? Do you suppose they keep it
for themselves? I think they do. I think they are just a bunch of
lawyers lining their own pockets with money they are stealing from
the public.

Look at it from the writer's side. The composer writes a piece of
music in his twenties. Ha possibly has no income apart from
royalties, which aren't enough for him to build up a decent pension
pot, but he knows that if the music keeps being played, he'll get
money for that. His (or her) spouse may well survive them by a
number of years, and wll need the money that BMI (Or, over here,
PRS and MCPS) collect on their behalf to survive. Or, it may be
paying for the composer's children to go through music college to
write and perform more music. Now you want to come along and make
money one the back of their creativity, but you're not going to pay
them a dime. Does that sound fair?
Also, if the music's so out of date it's not worth paying royalties
for, then I assume you perform it for free, and don't see why any
musician playing the "worthless" stuff that *is* out of copyright
should get paid. Say, the members of the New York Philharmonic.

I do perform it for free. And, I don't mind paying for the sheet
music, or for CD's of the music. but when the BMI police tell the
Pizza store owner (or whoever) that they have to pay $1000 dollars a
year because he is using their music to draw customers into his
establishment and we are playing there for free, so he has little
choice but to stop us, then I object to that. Especially when the
music was written in the years between 1927 and 1957, and the only
people who appreciate it are in their seventies. (usually from the
local retirement centers) 1957 was over 50 years ago, and BMI is not
giving any of that money to anyone who composed any music between
1927 and 1957.

The fee is to play *any* music, not just the stuff you play. The shop
owner could, for the same fee, get a modern band in to play modern
music. The fee is also, as has been said elsewhere in the thread,
negotiable to a degree if you want to make the effort. Mind you, the
fee of $1000 a year is less than the profit on a dozen extra pizzas a
week, and hopefully, he's seeing more than a dozen people a week
extra through his doors due to your playing. If not, then maybe he
needs a better band.
If BMI do the same as the PRS in Britain, then part of the money
collected is also paid to the estate of dead composers. Neither BMI
there or the PRS here *own* the music. They act *solely* as a
collection agent on behalf of the composers or other rights holders
that have asked them to do so.

However, as you seem to be uninterested in the facts, I'll say no
more.

I am not, "uninterested" in the facts. I just don't like the facts.

You have shown no interest in the facts. What you don't like seems
to be a bunch of non-factual garbarge that you apparently just pulled
out of your asshole, presumably to make more room for your head.
The situation that you keep whining about doesn't exist. But you
refuse to acknowledge the facts, prefering to repeat a load of utter
crap, on a forum where many of us actually know how it really
works, from actual experience. Not from some half-baked whine fest
from an ill-informed jerk who has no interest in the facts.

Yeah, you keep repeating your whining, but you're only whining about
a situation that exists in your dumb**** imagination. Not anything in
the real world. You have clearly and unambiguously proven that you
have no interest in the facts. You just like to whine that you should
get a free ride, being the leech that you are. And if you had half a
brain, you might even be able to get that free ride that you think
you're
entitled to.

But that would require listening to the real facts, from people that
actually
know the situation, and actually dealing with real people without
constantly
bleating about some bull**** that's only in your imagination. And as
much
as you'd like to sponge off the free ride that you think you deserve,
you
seem to prefer spouting your ignorance, proving far and wide to anyone
that reads you tirades, that you're ****ing moron. That seems to be
your
real goal. Mission accomplished, Numpty.

Nope, you're not interested in the facts, and you've provided the
proof of that.