01-16-2020, 04:44 PM
Same thing happened in my town. BMI/ASCAP sent agents in to local bars and slapped them with fines for not having licensing agreements in place when bands played. This isn't a HUGE town. They were just starting to get some live music performances and this essentially killed it. All of it. There is no longer any live music performed in bars in this town unless it is original works. There isn't enough revenue to justify getting the licensing required, so they just did away with it all. They can't even have music playing in the place on the radio or streaming from the internet. They put TVs up and just told BMI/ASCAP to P155 off.