11:00am Wednesday 15th October 2008
By Readers' Letter
I would like to give you my thoughts about the Performing Rights Society’s somewhat draconian views about Ye Olde Pastie Shoppe in Bolton (“Owner told to get a licence or pull the plug on music,” October 8).
Radio stations pay large amounts of money to licensing organisations PRS and PPL for the music they play, and music has been on the radio for many years.
During the war, there were programmes like Workers Playtime and Music While You Work. Now, many radio stations have features about workplaces.
If the PRS force people to switch their radios off then how are these stations going to survive?
Music has to be heard before people go out and buy it.
How many of us have tracks on our iPod, in our CD collection or, in my case, on old reel to reel tapes that we have not heard before we actually bought them?
Usually, people will hear a track several times before they buy it —and radio is a vital part of that. By telling people to turn off their radios in the back of shops like the pasty shop, the PRS is, effectively, hurting the very artists it is trying to protect.
In the case of Ye Olde Pastie Shoppe, this is particularly maddening and, in fact, wrong.
The radio is in the kitchen, not the shop. If it is not audible in the front of the shop, how can it be deemed to be played publicly?
I know about all the arguments about music piracy, but this kind of rule does nothing to stop piracy, does it?
The PRS’s comments about the license being good value for money, because of all the music people can now hear, was not really relevant because the shop does not choose the music played on the radio.
I wait for a reply from the PRS in the letters page of The Bolton News — but not with very much hope.
Steve Pendlebury, Belmont Road, Astley Bridge
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