Originally Posted By: Notes Norton


I must respectfully disagree.

Here in South Florida venues that used to hire bands now hold open mic nights on Friday and Saturday nights. Since they used to pay musicians on those nights, it does take food out of the mouths of working musicians.

Sure the musicians are going there to have a little fun, but the club owner is saving hundreds of dollars by not paying them.

The owner gets paid, the bartenders gets paid, the wait staff gets paid, the cook (if there is one) gets paid, ASCAP gets paid, and even the people who scrub the toilets get paid. In the club owner's eyes, these people are worth more than the musicians.

And the musicians are agreeing that they are worth less than the person who cleans the toilets.

Plus the musicians bring their friends along who buy drinks and/or food so the club owner makes even more money by exploiting musicians who want to have fun.

You can't blame the club owner: free entertainment that brings their own business. I can blame the musicians though for allowing this to happen.

Most of the 'open mic' musicians have day jobs. How would you like it if someone came in to work one day a week on your job for free, and your boss gave you the day off and docked your pay for that day? That is essentially what you are doing to a fellow musician when you play for free in a for-profit establishment.

I'm not totally against playing for free. I go down to the VA hospital's nursing home and play for the disabled vets for free, I play for charities I believe in when I know that everyone else is volunteering their time, and I jam with other musicians either in non-profit venues or when I know the house band is getting a fair wage for the evening.

But as Pat mentioned, if the musicians were responsible for paying for the performing rights, perhaps the people who go to open mic nights wouldn't want to pay to play.

On a side note, I know the law does not agree and I advise people to follow the law, I feel that once a song gets to the Billboard hot 100 or equivalent, the public should be able to play these songs in a not-for-profit situation (like a condominium clubhouse party) without paying royalties under the Fair Use provision.

In the old days, the publishers and artists made money by selling sheet music. They didn't care where you played the music, you bought the rights to play it.

So perhaps if a musician buys a piece of music, he or she should be able to play it wherever he or she wants.

After all, if you own a book you can read it out loud wherever you want.

Just another thought to complicate the issue.

Insights and incites by Notes




We never played at an open mic night or a jamboree for the exact reasons that you mentioned. But, like you, we did play for free at a local VA hospital.

I also agree with you about the not for profit play issue. As long as no money is exchanging hands then you should be able to play without paying royalties.

I think that very few guitarists or bassists buy sheet music. They just get the chords, lyrics and tabs from the Internet. I also do that at times but I also have a ton of sheet music, music books, and fake books.

The above is only my opinion and YMMV.

Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

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