From the Christian Science Monitor:
After a 30-year run, the owner of the Sacred Grounds Coffee House in San Francisco has shut down the Thursday night open mics. Mamma Llama, a small coffeehouse in Weaverville, Calif., no longer features musicians from near and far. Open mics at the Ragged Edge Coffee House in Gettysburg, Pa., are down from 50 to 60 audience members to no more than 15 these days.
These grass-roots music events, spawning grounds for the next generation of musical talent, have come up against the demands of US copyright law, as enforced by a handful of companies who act as collection agents for songwriters and composers. The law states that no performer in a public venue can present someone else's copyrighted music without their permission and, usually, without compensating them. A number of agencies, chief among them Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), charge music venues an annual copyright "license fee" ranging from $300 to nearly $10,000 for the privilege of presenting someone else's music.
Smaller music venues around the country are struggling to pay these licensing fees. Many simply get worn down by repeated demands from the agencies for payment and threats of costly lawsuits and simply drop live music offerings altogether.
"It's killing the local music scene," laments folk musician Spook Handy, who's seen performance venues in his hometown of New Brunswick, N.J., drop from around 40 in the mid-1980s to half a dozen now. "We're not bringing up a new generation of musicians. They just don't have places to play."
Read the rest here.
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