I see. I don't wish to tell you how to play, but from my perspective, I cringe when I see Army's Paean and/or Mage's Ballad show up in non-hardcore content. It could be useful for some however, I guess. For me, I know how to manage my own MP and do not require the aid of those songs. As I said, I could be wrong, but I am fairly certain Paean is generally a DPS loss for a team of 4. The biggest exception to this is when I do 14 raises on tentacle boss in Void Ark (true story, and for reference 14 raises = 37k MP and max 13K MP)
I do, sometimes, mention to the bard, "Hey thanks for Ballad, you can turn it off now

". I'll throw this out if they are playing Ballad and I am 50%+ on MP (often more).