A ridiculous new rule is likely to be introduced to charge royalties to non-profit making groups who want to play music at an event.
Even fundraising discos in aid of a charity could be affected by these stringent copyright proposals.
Currently, anyone who wants to play songs in public has to pay a fee to the Performing Rights Society and Phonographic Performance Ltd, which licence public performances, but charities have always been exempt.
The UK Intellectual Property Office which grants the rights, wants to bring charities into line with other organisations.
As a primary school teacher I used all sorts of quirky music in shows, so I am worried that staff could now be banged up if,for instance,Robbie Williams's Angels was played, to accompany the shepherds watching over their flocks by night.
It got me thinking about the part music plays in our lives, and how our response to it can change over a lifetime.
At home my parents were forever bursting into song.Mum was in the Kynoch Follies in the war,and loved classical pieces, pop and musicals, while my great-grandmother,an opera singer, played the music halls with famous trouper Vesta Tilley.
Uncle Harold conducted the oldest male voice choir in Birmingham, and my dad, who adored big band stuff,was always drumming along to the radio with spoons or pens, or anything to hand.
As I rejected all serious music in my youth as 'square' (ie 'not cool'), I am surprised how much is familiar to me, though I didn't know I was absorbing it at the time.
Last week I saw the opera La Boheme, which moved me much more than the rock musical Rent and the film Moulin Rouge, though were both based on Pucinni's masterpiece.
Most surprising of all, while lying in bed listening to Classic FM, I found myself singing along to a beautiful piece, Handel's, Where'er You Walk, from the opera Semele.
I knew EVERY word, thanks to my school music lessons which I disliked intensely at the time and labelled boring. Thank you Mr Roper!
LAST WORD: Waitrose has used Ode to Autumn by Keats, in a respectful way, using beautiful seasonal images in an advert to sell their food. Spec Savers and New York Bagels - take note!
