Some fellow musiciancs and I have set up an irish session in our town. This session is taking place once a month for over two years now.
We are currently facing a problem with the SACEM, the company that holds (don’t know if the term is appropirate here) and manages authorship and copyrights for songs and music, might it be french or from abroad.
They billed the bar we were playing at, despite the informal aspect of the session, the absence of retribution, the free access the the bar and - at least we hope - music that we play being in the public domain. As a result, the bar doesn’t wish us to play anymore… until the problem has evolved or is solved. The bar is already paying fixed fees for playing music and organising gigs several times a year.
I understand that one’s work deserves protection (actually we do have music composers in the group so that we are aknowledged about the problem), but the music we play has no known composer, or the composer is dead over 70 years ago… We take care not to play contemporary trad music… But still… would it be a good reason to… ?
Plus, isn’t the inner philosophy in trad music being that it should be shared and that people contribute freely to its evolution and propagation ?
By the way, I suggest the reading of the excellent paper…
Is this problem part of another cultural french exception , or do you guys face or have faced in the past such problems in your country ?
I’m surprised the bar was “billed” when they’re already paying fees…in most countries, the fees cover any live music.
You could put together a set list of tunes that are in public domain and send this to the regulatory body…these folks are like vultures - they’re too lazy to do any research, don’t understand trad, and assume all music is under license which isn’t true.
I thought of that and started a list this morning. To prove them we are good willing persons, I wish we could have access to a repository that assets such tunes are public domain indeed…
For fun I entered “Planxty”, and a number of traditional tunes are listed, like PLANXTY GEORGE BRABAZON, Arranger MOLONEY PATRICK, Publisher WOODTOWN MUSIC PUBLICATIONS LTD
I imagine that the folks of SACEM need to be persuaded that a folk session is not playing anyone’s listed arrangements of traditional tunes.
PS: even worse:
PLANXTY HEWLETT Composer HAYWOOD CLIFFORD
PLANXTY IRWIN Composer FOUCHER Jean
Those would be copywrited arrangements not the tunes themselves. As long as your instrumentation doesn’t match the instruments used by the arranger, they’d be hard pressed to say copywrite is broken when the tune itself is public domain.
Obviously, they’re wrong. The tunes are composed by O’Carolan who is very much no longer with us. Compositional credit cannot be given to someone who simply arranges a tune.
Perhaps along with a list of trad tunes, a list of O’Carolan’s compositions can be provided to this group since they are not correct at all.
I’ve not personally dealt with these music industry folks, but every story I’ve read about them points out a significant lack of knowledge concerning traditional music. They may know a lot about modern compositions, but tunes that predate the existence of their organization are well beyond their knowledge.
This is a great idea…using an established reference to show public domain:
The idea that copyrighting trad parallels the enclosure of the Commons seems to be a prevailing line of thought coming out of the U. of Limerick and elsewhere nowadays.
Such a claim wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a courtroom. Sadly, folk musicians don’t generally have the time or money to fight outrageous claims like this.
At least SACEM tries to distinguish between arranger and composer.
BMI does not in its database: http://www.bmi.com
Titles are listed under Songwriter/Composer only.
, or do you guys face or have faced in the past such problems in your country ?
