... nor should it be.

Because this has now come up no less than three times this week, I decided to rant about it in a (slightly) more durable medium (no pun intended)

In theatre, professional or amateur, it is not acceptable to steal music

More than once I've worked on productions where I've been sent lists of YouTube videos or a Spotify playlist to play music during a show.

Yes, there are ways to 'rip' streams from these services, but none are legal for use in this way. I can just about understand it for a rehearsal, or a cast member practising with tracks at home but to play it in public is ridiculous and an insult to the artists whose work you are stealing.

If you hold a license from PPL / PRS then this allows you to play legally obtained music. It doesn't allow you to play from streaming services.

So, where do we get legal music?  Well, there're many options, the services I tend to use are

These all provide high-quality downloads (in most cases higher quality than the streaming versions anyway) and - in a pinch - Amazon Music (not the streaming version) although the download tracks aren't as high quality.

Another option of course is the good ol' CD, which you can 'rip' legally and copy to QLab for playback (because you own the original)

Also, when looking through YouTube and finding independent creators of music, most of the time the description will actually contain a link to purchase their music or, alternatively, just message them! Most are really accomodating and will be flattered that you want to use their song in your show, and provide a high quality recording either for a small fee or in exchange for crediting them.

I'm amazed how many times I've been given a poor quality YouTube rip only to find the description contained a link to download a FLAC!

Musicians are artists, and deserved to be paid for their work. Even in amateur theatre everyone is used to buying scripts, paying performance licenses etc so why do people continue to think it's acceptable to steal music?

Not only that, the quality is usually terrible. You can easily hear the difference between a dodgy YouTube rip and a purchased FLAC or even high quality MP3.

You're a creative yourself, you're putting on a show, so do right by your musical counterparts (and your audiences' ears) and do it properly, and legally. It's not that hard.

</rant>