PROTECTING COMPOSERS

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 105, 5 May 1937, Page 13

PROTECTING COMPOSERS

JUST OFF BEG ENT STREET, Lobdon, are the offices of a huge organisation whose work is to protect the rights of composers. It employs four hundred people. It has forty chousand composers on its books, and every song, dance tune, and symphony composed since the copyright law ol 1912 is in dts cabinet file. The Performing Rights Society might be described as the composer’s watch dog. By the act of 1912 he was given the right of levying a small royalty on any dance hall or entertainment that played his tunes, but th great difficulty was to know how t<« make- the law effective. For a com poser, however energetic, cannot always be running from one dance hall to another in the hope of discovering an orchestra which is playing one of his tune*. Hence the need for the Performing Rights Society. Mr. G. 11. Hatchman, its assistant general manager and secretary, explained how it worked amid the clatter cf the calculating machines. “Basically, it is kept simple. The society is non-profit making, and the less the overhead chargee are kept, the more there is loft for distribution. “The essence of the matter is that every organisation that publicly performs music, hotel, cinema or dancehall, pays us a yearly licence (fixed in proportion to dts size, seating capacity, etc.), and also *\ipplies us with a weekly return of every item of music it has used. and. how often it has used it. ” “Is it compelled by law to do this?” I asked.

Organisation as “Watchdog”

“Theoretically not before tlie actual performance,” said Mr. Hatchman, “but wo have the right to prosecute if at plays music without paying the fee. In practice this means that every place of entertainment in the country that publicly supplies music is on our books. The total amount of the funds raised by the licences is then pooled and distributed to the composers an proportion to the number of times then tunes or dances have been used.” Thanks to the vast and ingenious arrangement of calculating-machines, card-indexes, and filing-cabinets in Regent street, ,auy musician, knowing that a waltz of his is going to be played in a local dance hall In the north of Scotland —knows also that he will draw an infinitesimal royalty fm it. This applies also to relays of radio music. If a restauant keeps a wireless for entertaining its clients it must also pay a royalty on the music broadcast. A curious sidelight on this was thrown the other day. A email restaurant had fitted a wireless in a neighbouring room used by the proprietor and his family. The proprietor claimed that the wireless was private. The society fought the case. A Judge of the High Court gave his ruling. He elicited the fact that the wireless was heard in the restaurant and was meant to be heard in the restaurant. Remarking that “persons in the restaurant so constituted that the wireless affords them pleasure, if they are consuming their meals in the restaurant have the desired pleasure,” found for the plaintiff, and the royalty has henceforth to be paid.