Next time you’re jamming onstage in a Clark County library and someone yells out “Free Bird!” you’d better think twice before striking up those sweet chords. It’s one of those pieces of information you never knew you wanted to know: Covers aren’t allowed in the library.
Playing someone else’s music in front of a large audience is like renting a movie and showing it in a non-residential venue: You need proper licensing for that. Friends of Southern Nevada Library pays for the screening license so you can watch such gems as Trouble in Paradise—a 1932 love story about a pickpocket, a thief and their victim screening this Tuesday—without having to pay admission, but ASCAP and BMI accreditation would cost about $30,000 a year. “We may get it in the future, but we don’t have it now,” says public relations manager Karen Bramwell-Thomas.
Until then, the only covers you can copy will cost you 10 cents, and they belong to books.