Mercator Marketing Research, a company employed by IMRO to conduct research on behalf of its members, offers students 45 for every gig playlist they submit to the firm. Mercator then feeds the information to IMRO, which uses it to determine the allocation of royalties to the composers who make up its membership.

Mercator director Tim Healy would not divulge the parameters of the data collection except to say that a 'significant number' of students were working on its behalf. The person in charge of the intelligence gathering project, Helen Doyle, explained that sometimes two students would be sent to the same gig and were occasionally accompanied by an IMRO representative.

In addition to submitting a detailed spreadsheet on the performance, the student agents are also asked to get the band's phone number for crosschecking. IMRO also routinely verifies this data with the venue, Doyle said.

The scheme came to the attention of the Sunday Tribune via a Dublin City University internet forum, where the subject was being debated after Doyle had sent a notice to the students' union looking for agents. DCU students reacted with suspicion to the requests and expressed concerns that IMRO's real quarry was their peers' cover bands.

Doyle later submitted a message to the forum via an administrator clarifying that IMRO doesn't collect any money directly from bands, but rather collects licensing fees from venues; the playlists would help determine the proper allocation of royalties to composers, she explained.

Her comments were supported by a member of the forum who was also an agent.

While IMRO has no say in the financial arrangements between venues and bands, venues regularly pass on the extra costs to performers, according to sources in the arts and entertainment industry.

IMRO already issues licences and arranges tariffs for live music venues based on the amount of copyrighted music that gets performed. The tariffs are usually a percentage of the box office revenue and are usually agreed with a venue or representative bodies such as the Licensed Vintners Association. The venues typically issue monthly or quarterly returns to IMRO.

It is unclear why IMRO has devised such an administratively intense method for verifying the relevant data.

IMRO failed to respond to repeated requests to comment on this story.