"If I can choose between buying a CD for three lats instead of nine, I would of course buy the one for three. But this way a lot of royalty money is lost," said Anita Sosnovska, head of the Department of Documentation and Distribution in Latvia. Another problem is the collection of royalty money through licenses. Everybody running a business in Latvia knows he will need to pay for a lot of different licenses. One license causing some managers at different establishments to just shrug their shoulders is the music license.
"I know we have to pay for the music we play on our veranda, but this is the first time I have heard that you have to pay for the music you play inside of your restaurant. I think that if you have a restaurant you can do whatever you want," said one restaurant manager in old town.
Sosnovska is working for the AKKA/LAA, the Latvian Copyright Agency. Her job is to make sure if music is played or performed live for an audience, royalty money is paid to the people who have copyrights. In simple terms it means that if one wants to play music protected by copyrights, in an establishment for customers, one has to get a license even if one happens to run a small mini-golf course and feels like letting the Beatles entertain the clients.
The price for a music license can vary from 3.5 lats up to 14.00 lats per month, depending on how many days per month you are going to play music, how much space your bar, restaurant, casino or similar has, and finally the location, Riga or elsewhere in Latvia.
One bar manager said he thought the price for a music license was 70 lats per year, but that it had been a while since he last paid, and he wasn't sure of the price today.
Another manager suggested the price would be 10 lats per month.
"It can't be true that people don't know about us. We organize seminars and we put advertisements in papers," said Sosnovska.
A manager of a cafe said she had been to a seminar and had got the notion that she doesn't have to pay for a license, because they play music from only the radio.
Ainars Mielavs, the lead singer in the Latvian band Jauns Meness (New Moon) thinks the Latvian Copyright Agency has a confusing system.
"They are not so competent people. They are paying something but can never show where it is from. I don't understand the system. They just wait for invoices from the big radio stations," he said.
Mielavs also said that he thinks record companies in Latvia would like to start their own royalty company if nothing changes in future.
The royalty money paid is transferred via computers to the people who has copyrights on the music played in Latvia.
Last year 480,000 lats were collected in Latvia, and by the end of the year 1253 licenses were registered. This year 799 licenses have been registered, which is almost double the amount of licenses at the same time last year.
"But sometimes when we call to check up on the music license people get really angry and ask when they are supposed to start paying for the weather too. The police helps us sometimes with certain rights, because we can only politely inform about the music license. But if you want to play music in your cafe, for example, you have a duty to inform us," explained Anita Sosnovska.
It is not easy to make sure that everybody pays for their licenses.
"The owners of night clubs are, how should I say, strange business groups," she said with a sigh.
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