Ernest Alexandre Joseph Bourget (10 March 1814 – 2 October 1864 in Thomery (Seine-et-Oise aged 50 [1]) was a 19th-century French playwright, lyricist and librettist.
In 1847 at the Café des Ambassadeurs, Paul Henrion, Victor Parizot and Ernest Bourget refused to pay the bill as long as they would not receive anything from the performance of their works in the facility.
The profit from a modest eau sucré was ‘too small a thing for the proprietor to be able to present music and seats through a whole evening’.
The verdicts established that the transaction costs for a systematic collection of performing right fees could be covered by amounts claimed at a level which was related to the indemnity decided on by the Parisian courts of justice.
Hence, on 18 March 1850 Ernest Bourget, Victor Parizot and Paul Henrion, aided by the publisher Jules Colombier, started a mutual collecting society which later became known as La Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique (SACEM).