Hi, I'm working in a newly opened retaurant, and we have this mediocre music service for businesses. Their library is small and it gets very repetative. So I was wondering if I would get into any legal issues if I were to use youtube, or any other video streaming site, for music?
Posted Mar 16, 2015, 3:17 PM UTC
Yes, you can get into trouble for that. ASCAP and the other licensing agencies are pretty notorious for sending investigators to random restaurants and suing if they discover that a restaurant is playing music without a license from them.
This looks like a decent overview:
Nice informative link!
Back in the day I used to run radio stations. Quite often bars would play our station. Of course we loved it, but there was this sales rep that worked for a content provider (not Muzak, but similar) that would go from bar to bar, then report them if they were playing the radio.
It was his convoluted way of trying to drum up business.
IANAL, but definitely. The big music publishers have people whose entire job is to visit restaurants and stores to make sure the music they're playing is properly licensed. A violation can end up costing you thousands of dollars. Part of what you pay the service for is the correct licenses. Google "music rights lawsuit restaurant" and you'll find pages and pages of people who got in trouble for things like just playing the radio.
EDIT: Check out this article from the National Restaurant Association for a good explanation of the issue.
How about just don't have music? I never really got why they play music in restaurants. I'd much rather be able to have a conversation with the people I am dining with.
We're searching for ambient music, lounge or just really low key. More for setting a mood, rather than intence intense listening :)
You can do it legally with Pandora. Here's the link to the commercial plan
Music in a business, including a restaurant or bar, is very problematic. You basically have two choices:
Purchase the music from a music source that is specifically licensed to provide music to bars and restuarants and which has already taken care of any license fees.
Sign a license agreement with ASCAP (and maybe other licensing agencies) in order to play other music. You'll need this regardless of whether you use music you own (such as CD or purchased downloads, play a radio station or get music from any other source such as youtube. The music from all those sources is legal for personal listening but not for playing in a business unless licensed. You can't even hire a musician to play unless they are doing only their own original music and not cover songs written/owned by others.
With that said it isn't very difficult or even terrifically expensive to get the ASCAP license. So check it out.
You need a license from BMI and or ASCAP to perform music in your business (or you may negotiate individually with copyright holders)
Isn't Pandora like $3.99/month?
Yes, unless you make a deal with them to license their stream for commercial use. It's not an option for Spotify:
https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/faq/#!/article/public-usage
...and I doubt it is for Pandora (edit: it's not, see link below) or YouTube either, but you can check. Here is more information that might be useful.
That's all I needed to know, thank you. I was googling for the answer, and all I got was vague information. Thanks again.
Pandora has a service for businesses to be able to play it publicly. It's $24/mo as opposed to the $9/mo (or free if you don't mind ads) for personal use.