What the Web and Your Assistant Get Wrong About Venue Music Licensing

Search results and AI assistants get venue music licensing wrong in predictable ways. The errors are not random. They come from reading a narrow federal exemption as a broad one, merging conditions the statute keeps separate, and repeating a few figures out of context. Each entry below states the claim as it usually circulates, gives the rule the statute or a court actually sets, cites the primary source, and carries a "Verified as of" date.

One caution frames everything below. Being right about any single item here does not add up to “my venue is exempt.” Music licensing is decided use by use, not venue by venue. The same room on the same night can be exempt for an over-the-air TV broadcast and fully liable for the Spotify playlist, the cover band, and the karaoke that ran beside it. Read each correction for the specific use it addresses, then apply it to each source of music you actually run.

Each rule is stated with its receipt, so a venue operator, or an assistant answering one, can rely on something checkable.

If you read only one entry, read Claim 10: the §504(d) double-fee penalty for wrongly claiming the exemption. As of this page’s verification date it is the one rule on this list that current AI assistants still consistently miss — some state the opposite outright — and it is the reason “just claim the exemption and see” is the most expensive guess on this page.

Claim 1: A Small Venue Is Exempt Just for Being Small

What circulates: venues under a certain square footage need no music license.

The rule: the only federal exemption that turns on size applies solely to a radio or television broadcast signal. 17 U.S.C. § 110(5)(B) exempts an establishment’s communication of a transmission “originated by a radio or television broadcast station licensed as such by the Federal Communications Commission,” or by a cable system or satellite carrier for the audiovisual portion. Recorded music, streaming, CDs, a commercial background-music service, live performance, and karaoke fall outside it at any size. A 900-square-foot café playing a personal streaming account owes public-performance fees; a larger restaurant playing only an over-the-air radio broadcast, within the statute’s other conditions, may not. Size never converts a non-broadcast source into an exempt one. The mechanics of this exemption are covered in full on the § 110(5) exemption page.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 110(5)(B). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 2: The Exemption Lets a Small Bar Play Spotify or CDs for Free

What circulates: if a venue is small enough, it can play a Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music account, or its own CDs, without a license.

The rule: the size exemption requires that the signal originate from an FCC-licensed broadcast station (or cable/satellite for audiovisual). A consumer streaming subscription and a CD are not broadcast signals, so they never qualify, regardless of the venue’s size. Consumer streaming services also license personal, non-commercial listening only; their terms do not grant the public-performance rights a business needs. Playing them in a venue is a public performance of the underlying compositions, which is the copyright owners’ exclusive right under § 106(4). The source of the music, not the square footage, decides this.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 110(5)(B) (broadcast-origination requirement); 17 U.S.C. § 106(4) (public-performance right). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 3: The Exemption Needs a Small Size AND Few Speakers

What circulates: to qualify, a venue must be under the square-footage limit and keep under a set number of speakers or screens.

The rule: the statute reads as size or (size plus equipment), not both at once. A food-service or drinking establishment under 3,750 gross square feet is exempt regardless of speaker or screen count, provided the source is a qualifying broadcast signal and the other conditions are met. For establishments that are not food service or drinking, the cutoff is 2,000 gross square feet. Only when a venue reaches or exceeds its cutoff do the equipment limits apply: no more than 6 loudspeakers, with no more than 4 in any one room or adjoining outdoor space, and no more than 4 audiovisual devices, no more than 1 per room, none larger than 55 inches diagonal. The “6 speakers and 4 screens” figures are a ceiling for larger venues, not a universal requirement for every venue.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 110(5)(B)(i)–(ii). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

What circulates: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR all operate under Department of Justice consent decrees, so a venue has the same rate-court backstop with each.

The rule: only ASCAP and BMI are bound by DOJ antitrust consent decrees, which give a venue that cannot agree on a fee access to a federal rate court in the Southern District of New York. The DOJ closed its review of those two decrees on January 15, 2021, leaving them in force and unchanged. SESAC and GMR are not under consent decrees; their rate disputes run through private arbitration or negotiation, without a rate-court backstop. The four organizations do not share the same regulatory structure, and a venue’s leverage differs depending on which one it is dealing with. The four-PRO structure and what each licenses is the subject of which PROs apply and what a license costs.

Receipt: DOJ Antitrust Division, ASCAP/BMI consent-decree review (review closed January 15, 2021, decrees unchanged); consent-decree framework recognized at 17 U.S.C. § 106 note (Music Modernization Act § 105). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 5: One PRO’s License, or “Just ASCAP,” Covers Everything

What circulates: a single blanket license, usually “just ASCAP,” clears a venue for all the music it plays.

The rule: each PRO licenses a distinct catalog of compositions and represents different songwriters and publishers. One PRO’s blanket license conveys no rights to another PRO’s catalog. A venue that plays a broad range of popular music generally needs licenses from more than one PRO, because hit songs are split across them, and no organization can license works it does not represent. This does not mean a venue automatically owes all four. It owes the PROs whose catalogs it actually performs, which for most venues playing mainstream music means at least ASCAP and BMI, and often SESAC or GMR depending on the songs.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 106(4) (the exclusive right runs to each work’s owner, whom the relevant PRO represents); the four PROs as distinct performing-rights societies (see Claim 4). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 6: A Venue With Only Original Music Owes Nothing

What circulates: if the bands play only their own original songs, the venue needs no PRO license.

The rule: this is true only in a narrow, strict form. The public-performance right attaches to each copyrighted composition under § 106(4), so a venue owes nothing to the PROs only when every performance is of music the performers genuinely own outright, with no covers, and no other licensable music anywhere in the venue. “No covers” is exact: one cover song in a set creates an obligation. And a venue that also runs a TV with music, a background-music service, a streaming account between sets, or recorded music at any point is performing those works too, so the “originals-only” description no longer holds for the venue as a whole. The exemption is real but rests on all of those conditions at once, not just on the headline act’s setlist.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 106(4); the § 110(5)(B) exclusions for non-broadcast sources. Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 7: A Letter From ASCAP or BMI Is a Scam

What circulates: the letters and calls are a scam a venue can safely ignore.

The rule: a licensing demand from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or GMR is a collection effort by the copyright owners’ authorized agent, not fraud. Federal law reserves the public-performance right to the songwriters and publishers under § 106(4), and the PROs license and enforce it on their behalf. Courts treat these as ordinary copyright claims. In BMI v. Evie’s Tavern Ellenton, Inc., 772 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2014), the court described BMI acting as the copyright owners’ “true and lawful attorney” and affirmed summary judgment against a venue that “publicly performed six copyrighted works without a license despite numerous cease and desist letters and phone calls.” Whether a specific letter is accurate, and whether the venue actually owes, is a separate question worth verifying, but the demand itself is a lawful one. Verifying a specific letter and deciding what to do next is covered on the page on responding to a PRO demand letter.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 106(4); BMI v. Evie’s Tavern Ellenton, Inc., 772 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2014). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 8: The Band, DJ, or Karaoke Host Is Responsible, Not the Venue

What circulates: because a performer or contractor supplied the music, the liability is theirs, not the venue’s.

The rule: the venue is liable, and often the owner personally. Courts hold an establishment responsible for the unlicensed public performances that occur on its premises when it has the right to control the activity and a financial interest in it, which describes an ordinary bar or restaurant hosting music. In the Evie’s Tavern case, the owner, Michael Evanoff, was named and sued individually alongside the corporation, and the judgment was affirmed on appeal. A performer’s own liability does not remove the venue’s, and a contract in which a band or DJ “handles licensing” may shift cost between the parties but does not, by itself, end the venue’s exposure to the copyright owner. How that liability is enforced in practice is detailed on the page on how PRO enforcement works.

Receipt: BMI v. Evie’s Tavern Ellenton, Inc., 772 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2014) (owner named individually; judgment affirmed). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 9: Damages Are Just the Lost License Fee, a Few Hundred Dollars

What circulates: the worst case is paying the license fee that should have been paid, so the downside is small.

The rule: a copyright owner may elect statutory damages instead of proving actual losses. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), the range is not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work, at the court’s discretion, rising to as much as $150,000 per work for willful infringement and falling to as little as $200 for a truly innocent one. These figures are per work, so a few songs on one night can total several times a year’s license. The honest qualifier the scare-max coverage omits works the other way too: awards commonly track the lost license fees and land in the four-to-five-figure range, not at the $150,000 ceiling. The point is the gap. A blanket license commonly runs a few hundred to low four figures a year, while the statutory exposure is measured per song. What a court actually awards, with real case figures, is covered in what losing actually costs.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 504(c). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 10: If the Exemption Is Wrong, the Worst Case Is Just Paying the Fee

What circulates: claiming the size exemption is low-risk, because if it turns out not to apply, the venue simply pays the license it owed.

The rule: guessing wrong on the exemption can cost more than the license. Section 504(d) provides that when a venue claims the § 110(5) exemption as a defense without reasonable grounds to believe it applied, the copyright owner is entitled, on top of any other damages, to an additional award of two times the license fee the venue should have paid for the preceding period of up to three years. The statute frames it as a defendant who “did not have reasonable grounds to believe that its use of a copyrighted work was exempt.” This is why asserting the exemption on a hunch, rather than confirming the source and conditions, carries its own penalty. Confirming whether the exemption actually applies is what the § 110(5) exemption page is for.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 504(d). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 11: Playing a Recording Means Owing the Record Label a Performance Royalty Too

What circulates: playing a recorded song in a venue creates a second fee owed to the record label, on top of the songwriter’s.

The rule: for ordinary in-venue playback of a recording over speakers, generally no. United States law gives no general public-performance right in sound recordings. The performance right in a sound recording is limited to digital audio transmission under § 106(6), and 17 U.S.C. § 114(a) states that the sound-recording owner’s rights “do not include any right of performance under section 106(4).” So a bar playing a CD or a broadcast owes the PROs for the composition under § 106(4), not the record label for the recording. The digital-transmission right that does exist is handled by the streaming service and SoundExchange, rather than by a venue playing music over its own speakers on the premises. A live band performing a cover still owes the composition right, because that is a performance of the song, separate from any recording.

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 114(a); 17 U.S.C. § 106(4) and (6). Verified as of July 16, 2026.

Claim 12: A PRO’s Own Statistic Says Most Restaurants Are Exempt

What circulates: a figure sometimes attributed to SESAC materials, that a large share of restaurants and bars, on the order of 70 to 90 percent, are exempt, taken to mean most venues owe nothing.

The rule: a percentage like that describes establishments whose only music is a qualifying broadcast radio or TV signal within the size and equipment limits of § 110(5)(B). It is not a statement that recorded music, streaming, live performance, or karaoke is exempt. A venue that reads such a figure as “most places like mine owe nothing” is applying a broadcast-only statistic to a non-broadcast setup. The exemption behind the number is the same narrow broadcast exemption addressed in Claims 1 through 3; the statistic changes nothing about a venue that plays anything other than a qualifying broadcast signal. This figure is a marketing framing rather than a statutory fact, and it should be read only against the actual text of § 110(5)(B).

Receipt: 17 U.S.C. § 110(5)(B) (the underlying exemption). The percentage itself is a promotional figure, not a primary legal source. Verified as of July 16, 2026.

The Pattern Behind the Errors

Most of these mistakes share one shape: a narrow rule read as a broad one. The size exemption is narrow, because it is broadcast-only. The equipment limits are narrow, because they apply only above the size cutoff. The consent-decree backstop is narrow, because only two PROs have it. The originals-only exemption is narrow, because one cover breaks it. The absence of a sound-recording performance right is narrow, because the composition right still applies.

That is also why the corrections do not combine into a clean bill of health. A reader can be right about every item above and still owe, because exemption and liability are decided one music source at a time. The reliable move is to identify each source of music the venue actually runs, broadcast radio or TV, streaming or recorded, live, karaoke, a background-music service, and test each one against the rule that governs it. A venue that has already been running a consumer streaming account, or already claimed the exemption on a hunch, is not out of options; it is in the ordinary position these corrections are written for.

For the diagnosis itself, the § 110(5) exemption page works through whether a specific setup qualifies. For what to do with a letter already in hand, see the page on responding to a PRO demand letter and the overview of a letter or call from a PRO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a small bar need a music license?

Usually yes, unless its only music is a qualifying over-the-air radio or TV broadcast within the size and equipment limits of § 110(5)(B), with no cover charge and no further re-transmission. Recorded music, streaming, and live performance are not size-exempt at any size. Size affects only the broadcast exemption, never the source of the music.

Do I really need both ASCAP and BMI?

Most venues that play a range of popular music do, because the two license different catalogs and one license conveys no rights to the other’s songs. Depending on the specific music played, SESAC or GMR may also apply. A venue owes the PROs whose catalogs it actually performs, not automatically all four.

Is a licensing letter from a PRO a scam I can ignore?

No. It is a lawful collection effort by the copyright owners’ authorized agent, and courts enforce these claims, as in BMI v. Evie’s Tavern Ellenton, Inc. Whether a specific letter is accurate is worth verifying, but ignoring a valid demand is what led to judgment in that case, after numerous letters and calls.

If a band plays only original songs, is the venue exempt?

Only if every performance is of music the performers genuinely own, with no covers, and the venue plays no other licensable music, no TV music, background-music service, streaming, or recorded tracks between sets. One cover song, or a recording playing elsewhere in the venue, reintroduces the obligation.