As an independent performing songwriter, I find that the way ASCAP and BMI go after small venues takes opportunities to perform away from me. Although I can get around their rules by only playing self-composed songs, venues are so scared of being sued that they're afraid to allow any music, live or recorded, at all.

What's worse is that the fees collected from veunes that host live music usually don't go to the artists whose songs are actually played. Rather than ask venues to keep logs of songs played, ASCAP and BMI just assume that what's performed in a given venue is the same as what's on local commercial radio. In folk-acoustic venues especially, this is not the case. For example, artists like Joni Mitchell and Kate Wolf get played far more in little coffeehouses than on commercial radio. Basically, most of the money is funneled up to the mega-stars, who make more than enough as it is.

If a venue plays a local radio station and gives ASCAP and BMI their fees, at least the distribution of fees to artists is likely to be more equitable. But ASCAP and BMI already collect from the radio station itself. This double collection doesn't make sense.

This is just another example of corporate america ripping off the public.
f you play a radio station in the background, or even use a pay service, the bar should not be charged. The Radio station has already paid their blood money to the leeches, and so has the pay service. What these bloodsuckers want is to be paid double for the same music.
If they get away with this, when are they going to start charging us for listening to a Juke Box, or even listening to a radio station or a CD that we purchased?

Nobody pays $5 to go to a bar to 'listen to the music' (unless it is a live show, in which case the ASCAP has no business being involved anyway).

The bar owners need to get some legal representation and need to start charging ASCAP for advertising their music every time they play a song by a ASCAP musician. Who is helping who more here, really?

Also, in the meantime, the bar owners getting sued by ASCAP should demand an accounting of every penny that is collected in licensing. The bar owners should track the music played over a certain period and if ASCAP doesn't show by record that those musicians and only those musicians got reimbursed, they should sue ASCAP for fraud.

Either way, this is a big pile of greedy BS orchestrated by the parasites of society who do nothing but try to get rich off other peoples' labors and other peoples' money.