Even though the cafes will be closed for a total of five months this year, they are still paying almost the full amount in copyright.
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It is unlikely that the cafes and restaurants will open their doors this year. Including the first lockdown (from mid-March to early June), they will be closed for about five months this year. And they have therefore not played (live) music in their business.
Yet again this year they have to pay almost the full copyright fee to Unisono, the collection platform of the Sabam copyright association, among others. Unisono currently offers the catering businesses only a ‘solidarity discount’ of one month on the annual fixed amount.
‘It is very strange that our members have to pay copyrights for the months in which they are obliged to close,’ says Matthias De Caluwe of Horeca Vlaanderen. ‘We want an invoice that is calculated in a fair and objective manner’, adds Pierre Poriau of the Fédération Horeca Wallonie.
Federal intervention
The Flemish, Walloon and Brussels catering federations will have a meeting with Unisono next week. ‘I don’t want to anticipate that, because we want to give the consultation every chance of success,’ says Olivier Maeterlinck of Unisono. ‘Catering establishments pay a fixed amount every year. In April we already agreed that they would not have to pay any copyrights for one month. We certainly understand that they had to close for longer than that one month. On the other hand, the authors and musicians have also been hit extremely hard. They have also seen a lot of income disappear. ‘
Is it the catering businesses that have to pay for this? Maeterlinck: ‘We hope that we will get the federal government to compensate authors and artists for the loss of copyrights. We would prefer to submit this application for support together with the hospitality sector. ‘
De Caluwe of Horeca Vlaanderen continues to hope for understanding. “If next week’s consultations fail to resolve the issue, we will see how we can defend the rights of our members.”
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