Deregulating live music - yay!

Phil_aka_Pip

Copied from a page on the MU site ... but it's for all of us not just MU members (aside: if you're not a member maybe you should be - check it out!). Anyway the politicians are considering undoing some of their past meddling with the live music scene, which the MU welcomes, and recommends sending this (or text like it)

Dear Sir/Madam

I welcome Government plans to bring forward changes to entertainment licensing. My remarks are primarily focused on supporting proposals to deregulate live and recorded music. The key features of this deregulation being:-

• To increase the size of an audience that does not require permission for a performance of amplified live music taking place between 08:00 and 23:00 in a licensed premise or workplace from 200 to 500 people.

• To exempt the playing of recorded music from requiring permission between 08:00 and 23:00 in a licensed premise where an audience does not exceed 500 people.
• To exempt live and recorded music activities held in a school, hospital, community or local authority premise from entertainment licensing between 08:00 and 23:00 where an audience does not exceed 500 people.
• To exempt entertainment activities held by, or on behalf of, local authorities, schools, hospitals on their own premises, as well as nursery provision on non-domestic premises, from entertainment licensing between 08:00 and 23:00 with no audience limits.

Yours faithfully

to: Regulated_Entertainment_Consultation@Culture.gsi.gov.uk

ICBM

All good, but it's important to note that those aren't proposals for *deregulating* live music, just for changing the regulations. Politicians seem to have a fundamental problem with letting go of things where they should not need to interfere in the first place.

Why regulate the number of people, or the hours at all? Why make any distinction between live music and recorded music, or between any form of music and any other form of noise? Recorded music can be just as loud, and go on more continuously, as live music.

It's fair enough to restrict the opening hours and volume levels as part of a venue licence, but surely the only thing that matters is whether any noise produced is an annoyance to those who live around it, and if it isn't, why does it matter how it's made?

For what it's worth, when I lived above a pub the only thing that ever annoyed me was when the cleaners would come in early in the morning at the weekend and put the jukebox on.

Phil_aka_Pip

I think its because they want to be seen to be in control from the viewpoint of the average Daily Wail reader. Given that there will always be some who want some form of regulation, it is clearly best to let them have regulations, but of a kind that don't restrict your activities too much.