[nradov]

It's not the providers like Spotify doing enforcement. Music licensing agencies like ASCAP and BMI literally send their employees out as undercover investigators to bars and restaurants. They record which songs are played, then send a demand for payment (with penalties) along with threatening a lawsuit. Obviously they can't check every bar but they try to hit enough to scare the others.

[filmgirlcw]

Exactly. And all it often takes for a small bar/restaurant owner is to get one of those demand letters to scare them to settle. Of course, it can depend on the size of the bad/restaurant too. A small place with a capacity of 30 or 35 people might not care about an ASCAP demand letter that caught them using Spotify. But your larger places and especially anything that is a chain or franchise are going to take that stuff seriously. And the reality is that for music, there are a number of inexpensive sources that are licensed that a place can use. It won’t be as convenient as Spotify, perhaps — but those MusicChoice cable channels are often targeted to bars or other businesses because they don’t charge an additional mechanical performance license — the business just pays whatever they pay the satellite or cable provider.

The problem for businesses that want to go around those types of regulations isn’t that there isn’t a market for business owners who don’t care about music or broadcast licensing. There is one. The issue is the real target market for something like this startup is going to be a high-revenue/capacity bar or a chain. And those places tend to care a lot more about compliance.