Then this blatant nonsense with these collecting societies strikes back at those who have benefited from it for many years. When you do a concert you don't just have to pay for the composition and arrangement and such, you also have to pay for the secondary exploitation rights (i.e. the performing musicians), and if someone sings, you also have to satisfy the collecting society responsible for the lyrics. And if you want to make live recordings of the concert accessible to people (even for free) it gets even more complicated. And ironically, the musicians and composers get the least from this horrendous machinery. The musicians who can secure a decent income from the collecting societies' revenues can be counted on one hand. For most of us, it is just enough for a part of the travel expenses.

The people who still dare to perform a classical concert somewhere in the hinterland are immediately punished and exempted by these collecting societies. In the age of the Internet, this is now even automatic. No wonder that there are fewer and fewer places that perform.

So today the shot is well and truly fired in the wrong diretion when composers and musicians assign their rights to such a society. Where there is hardly any market anyway, the promoters are penalised even more, although composers and musicians should be rather glad that someone is still listening to them.

I, for my part, am not affiliated with any such society anymore and have all my fellow musicians sign agreements whereby I pay them directly and no further claims of such societies are permissible.