A licence just to play music - why should I bother?

Most people involved in our specialized area of dance music whether it's a club or school, teacher or dj, organizer of a dance
holiday or festival, seem to find the legal complexities of music copyright licences bewildering. The same basic questions
always arise: what is copyright? why do I need a licence? what does it cover? and do I really need to bother about it?

Copyright was introduced some 300 years ago. Originally it literally meant the right to copy and was given to authors of books
and articles. Today the law protects a wide range of material including musical works and sound recordings.

UK law gives the owner an exclusive right which allows them to exploit their work commercially and most importantly to prevent
others from infringing those rights. If you are playing music in public, and most strict tempo dance records are sold specifically
for public dancing events, you are legally required to hold a licence from Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL).

There are two licensing organisations you should be aware of. First there is the Performing Right Society (PRS) who licence the
use of the musical works (the tunes) and distribute fees to composers and music publishers. PRS invariably licence the venue,
and therefore this licence is not normally your responsibility, unless you own or lease the venue. Then there is PPL, who licence
the public use of the sound recordings (CDs), and distribute fees to the artists who perform on the recordings and to the record
companies who produce them. PPL normally licence the individual club or event organizer for this use, and it is therefore your responsibilty to make sure you are covered.

So why do you need to bother about obtaining a PPL licence? The first and most obvious reason is that if you ignore the need
for a PPL licence altogether you are breaking the law and could risk litigation.

The second reason is to protect the future of your kind of music and the specialist dance record companies such as Maestro,
Tema, Savoy, Dance & Listen, etc that regularly produce the quality recordings required for your dancing pleasure.

In a climate where copying, sharing, and pirating are common problems faced by all record companies, PPL's distribution of
performance royalties allows Maestro and other specialist record companies to serve you, one of the most important sections
of society largely ignored by the major record companies, with a choice and quality of recordings made specifically for your
entertainment and relaxation.

So that is why we want you to bother to insure you are covered by the appropriate PPL licence when you play our kind of music.
And we would also like to go a stage further and get you to let PPL know about the dance records you are using. The accurate
distribution of the fees collected, depends on you completing the PPL return forms. With regular returns, the fees paid by you
will find their way to the right record companies and to the artists whose recordings you have played. The fairness and accuracy
of this distribution really can depend on you.

Performance royalties are the lifeblood of the dance music industry, and consequently the dance industry. Our ability to produce
quality dance music into the future will increasingly depend on the support you show by having the appropriate PPL licence for
your event, and then by letting PPL know whose music you are playing.

In order for us to keep the price of our CDs down and yet be able to keep the quality and choice of music at even higher levels
than before, we really do depend on you to bother about PPL.

Many thanks,

Tommy Sanderson
Maestro Records