The cost of providing background music in pubs is to rise massively in 2006 in a move that will hit licensees across the country.PPL licences - which enable pubs to play music from jukeboxes, CD players, cassettes and mini hi-fi systems - are being hiked up by as much as 500 per cent because of changes to the copyright law. The move has outraged licensees across the country. One licensee told The Publican he would give up his pub rather than pay the extra 367 per cent he was facing. Allan Hayes, licensee of the Buck House Hotel in Bangor on Dee, Wrexham, said: "I currently pay £149.84 as my pub is between 651 and 700 square metres. Now I will have to pay £700. Enough is enough. I'm going to refuse to pay the increase - I might as well give up this pub and go on the dole."Stuart Jordan, licensee of Kasbar in Clapham, London, said the rise was outrageous. "Our venue is approximately 400 square metres so we will have to pay £400 instead of £85.63. "We will have to pay for the licence as if we don't have music we'd have no customers and it would kill our business."Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) - which is responsible for issuing the licences so that the rightful owner of the copyright receives their royalties - defended the move. Spokeswoman Jill Drew told The Publican: "We have consulted music users, the industry and other organisations and we have tried to come up with a fair scheme. "We've also had to incorporate the charge for radio and TV broadcast. In real terms we believe it is good value as a pub of 800 square metres will be paying £800 for a year - which works out at just £15 a week."Currently, pubs spanning 400 square metres or less are charged £85.63 a year for this licence. Fees are then increased at a rate of £10.70 per band of 50 square metres, so at the highest end of the scale a pub spanning 1,000 square metres would pay £214.05. But the changes will mean that in 2006, pubs spanning 100 square metres will pay £100 and that will increase at a rate of £100 for every 100 square metres. Larger venues of 1,000 square metres will have to pay a whopping £1,000 instead of the current £214.05 - nearly five times as much.Rita King, deputy director of pub and leisure at the British Beer & Pub Association, said: "We're absolutely against these proposed increases. "We've been working with PPL and agreed that smaller businesses should pay less than the larger venues, but we're not happy about these increases."The rising cost of a PPL licence
