Playing music in a restaurant, salon, or shop is a public performance. Personal Spotify is not a business license. The expensive part is not always the annual PRO invoice. It is mixing sources you did not license, or treating karaoke night like a background stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five costs show up after the speaker is already on. None of them require scare copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice.<\/strong> If you mix SyncPoint with other music sources, talk with your counsel or the relevant PRO about those other sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States there are five performing rights organizations for musical works: ALLTRACK, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR. Each represents a different catalog. BMI\u2019s FAQ is direct: a license from another PRO is not a BMI license. NMRA tells restaurants the same thing \u2014 you usually need more than one if you play mainstream catalogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those invoices scale. Occupancy, square footage, recorded vs live, TVs, DJs, nights per week. We are not reprinting a rate card here. The high-level total-cost frame is already on the site: how much commercial background music costs<\/a>. The PRO map is in ASCAP, BMI & SESAC explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A commercial background service can include public performance rights for its<\/em> stream. NMRA\u2019s caveat still applies: that service almost never covers live bands, DJs, TVs, karaoke, jukeboxes, or consumer apps, and it may not include every PRO. Check the source, not the vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most files do not start in court. They start as mail, email, or a phone call. Entuned\u2019s 2026 letter guide calls it a licensing demand backed by a documented file \u2014 usually investigator visits and calls. In most of those writeups, nobody has sued yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. copyright law sets statutory damages for infringement. Commercial-music and law-firm explainers (Entuned, Vondran) cite the same range in 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 504(c): $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 per work if a court finds the infringement willful. Attorney\u2019s fees can be added. NMRA cites the $150,000 ceiling when it tells members not to ignore a letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those are statutory ranges, not a SyncPoint quote card. The venue-sized versions look like the next section. If a letter is already on the desk, start with what to do with an ASCAP or BMI demand letter<\/a>, then inventory every music source in the room, split karaoke and live from the background stream, and pull invoices. The PRO map is in ASCAP, BMI & SESAC explained<\/a>. Personal apps: Spotify for business<\/a>. Do not use this post as a reply script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ottobar in Baltimore is the current example, and it is easy to misread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On June 23, 2026 a federal magistrate ordered the club to pay about $12,048.75 in statutory damages (Daily Record: \u201cslightly over $12,000\u201d) plus $6,500 in attorney\u2019s fees to BMI and three publishers (Sony Music Publishing, EMI Blackwood Music, All Clear Music). The Daily Record<\/em> headlined $18.5K. The Banner<\/em> wrote \u201cover $18,000.\u201d BMI had asked for more. The court used 2.5\u00d7 an annual licensing fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The songs were karaoke, in Otto Upstairs: \u201cTake On Me,\u201d \u201c(I Just) Died in Your Arms,\u201d and \u201cGoodbye Earl.\u201d Not a house background stream. Owner Tecla Tesnau told The Banner<\/em> she had licensing agreements with other agencies and mistakenly thought she was completely covered. BMI told the court it had reached out more than 30 times since 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SyncPoint would not have covered those three songs. licensing<\/a> excludes live performances, DJs spinning other catalogs, and karaoke of third-party songs. A cleared background catalog in the dining room does not license karaoke night. Budget and license them as different jobs, or do not run the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three public cases, three versions of the same sentence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n BMI\u2019s FAQ again: Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music do not clear public performance. A license from another PRO does not cover BMI. The venue owner is the licensee, not the DJ or the band. Personal streaming is covered on the site in Spotify for business<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The license you bought is for a source and a location. Drift is a cost because it is how a covered dining room grows an uncovered patio, a staff-phone aux, a holiday Bluetooth speaker, or a second storefront on the same login.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One SyncPoint subscription or one Music Pack is one physical location unless you add site licenses. The multi-location version of that sentence is already written: multi-location business music licensing<\/a>. One consumer account in every store is still a no. Site License 1 is $5.00 per month; Site License 10 is $25.00 per month, on pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Staff phones are the cheap version of the same drift. Dedicated device, bookmark the player, write it in the opening checklist. Hardware does not legalize a personal account; it only makes a licensed source reliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SyncPoint is a commercial background catalog plus a web player. It is not packs-only, and it is not a blanket legal shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Subscriptions and packs are built so you can play our curated catalog for background use at the licensed location without a separate PRO license for that SyncPoint music<\/em>. Show the invoice and the licensing page if someone asks what is playing. That is documentation for SyncPoint tracks at that location \u2014 not a blanket over someone else\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. PRO invoices that are not a single flat number<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. The letter you ignore<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Karaoke and live are not background music<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. \u201cI already pay someone\u201d is how the gap opens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n
5. Source drift \u2014 phones, patios, and the second door<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What SyncPoint is from here<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n