Scam-hit pubs get jukebox go-ahead

Pubs supplied by rogue jukebox firm Access All Areas — whose directors were jailed last week — are now able to play music legally.

The 200 or so pub accounts have been taken on by legitimate jukebox supplier NSM.

Richard Stewart, head of dubbing and tariff development at PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd), revealed the news after Access All Areas directors Malcolm and Peter Wylie were jailed at Newcastle Crown Court.

Stewart said: "The pub licensees haven't ended up without music, and now they have legal music. Everyone seems to have come out well, apart from the Wylies."

Gateshead-based Access All Areas, which turned over more than £3m since it was set up in 2001, did not pay fees to music licensing

bodies PPL or MCPS (Mechanical-Copyright

Protection Services).

The company changed names several times and in May 2008, Trading Standards executed a warrant on behalf of PPL and the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) to raid their offices.

They found evidence of copyright infringement totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The company traded under different names including Access All Areas Entertainment, Access All Areas Production, Mixopia and Tracks Alive.

It sold and rented audio/visual jukeboxes to pubs and other leisure venues.

Malcolm Wylie, 59, of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, was jailed for three years and banned from being a director for 10 years after admitting a count of distributing infringing copyright work. His son, Peter Wylie, 27, was found guilty of two counts of the same offence. He was given a nine-month prison sentence and a 15-month term, which will run concurrently.

The other defendant, William Ross, was given a 36-week jail term, suspended for a year, as part of a community order.