[photopress:karaokebar.jpg,full,alignright]A new fee for karaoke bars was due to start on January 1 but it seem not to have happened. The China Audio and Video Association did not levy royalty fees at what was thought to be the start of the association’s new fee regime.
Representatives of several of the city’s key karaoke bars said they had not yet received any notices in connection with the fees. They also said they would support the Guangzhou Cultural and Entertainment Industry Association’s call to reject the charges.
Song Qingxiang, an executive at Guangzhou Golden Times KTV, said, ‘No one has contacted us in connection with the royalty fee payment. Even if we had been notified, we would not have paid a single penny, at least not until the fee system is more reasonable and legal.’
The China Audio and Video Association and the soon-to-be established China Audio and Video Collective Administration Association have been charged with collecting an RMB12 ($1.5) daily fee for every karaoke room at bars in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Karaoke bar operators complain that the charge is too high to bear and that the bodies charged with collecting the fees are not legally authorized to carry out such work.
Huang Shiqiu, president of the Guangzhou Cultural and Entertainment Industry Association, which represents the leading karaoke service providers in Guangzhou, described the new system as ‘absolute chaos’.
Source: China Daily