rxc, they probably do, or at least restaurants are afraid they will. I’ve never actually heard restaurant staff sing that exact song. I’ve always heard them sing different birthday songs.

I wonder if the copyright holders of “Happy Birthday to You” go after restaurants for singing it to customers.

All restaurants and places where music is publicly played or performed are required to pay a license fee to ASCAP or BMI

One place in the article did this. They got sued anyway because they didn’t get it from both. You could get a license from both and still get sued because the writer in question doesn’t belong to either. (There was a case where ASCAP had some labels drop some songs out, and then refused to tell Pandora what was no longer covered by their license, in an effort to “negotiate” higher rates under threat of the lawsuit that would happen if they played one of those unknown songs.) Is a restaurant owner seriously supposed to sit there and vet every song a musician wants to play to make sure it’s on the list?

You know when someone says that an artist “doesn’t even write his own songs”? That’s often true, but yet the artist is rich and famous, so how do the actual writers get paid?

I would assume that the artist (or his label) would pay the writer for the rights to record the song. I’m also with Lee in that it seems like the person actually performing the song without rights should be the one in trouble, when it comes to live music, instead of the owner of the place it happens to be played.

TV networks and radio stations pay fees also.

Yes, they do, and they should… which is why it seems to be double-dipping to also charge a place for tuning in to that station.

After all, if as an author I plagiarize another author’s book, my publisher and I are the ones who will get sued. The bookstores that sold my book will not have to pay the price for my crime, other than the money they’re already out for my books they haven’t sold yet, and often not even that.