Oh my god this attitude absolutely infuriates me. I just assisted my kids’ piano teacher in organizing an online virtual piano festival. The technical piece was easy- set up a google form where students could submit their information and a video of their performance.

The hard part? In an in person festival, the student hands their sheet music to the judge sitting in the room before performing, so the judge can track and note any deviation between the music and the performance.

We wanted a similar experience online, so our local festival organizers reached out to the wonderful music publishers licensing lawyers. Their response was wholly unhelpful. They wanted to make SO certain that in this pandemic their precious sheet music for elementary school age kids was NOT stolen. They wanted measures such as pasting a “used with permission” watermark on any picture of the music, purchasing a separate copy for the judges, and ensuring secure erase of any files after the festival!

It was absolutely insane. This sort of inflexible attitude in a time of crisis makes me irrationally angry. If we had any way to avoid purchasing music from these .... people ... I would do it in a heartbeat.