[strogonoff]

> They are selling their songs cheaper for TV, radio or ads.

I guess that somehow refutes the points I made, I just can’t see how.

Radio stations, like the aforementioned venue owners, pay the rights organizations a flat annual fee. TV programs do need to license these songs (as unlike simple cover here the use is substantially transformative), but again: 1) it does not rip off songwriters (holder of songwriter rights for a song gets royalties for performance of its covers, songwriter has a say in any such licensing agreement), and 2) often a cover is a specifically considered and selected choice: it can be miles better fitting for a scene than the original (just remember Motion Picture Soundtrack in that Westworld scene), and unlike the original it does not tend to make the scene all about itself so much. It feels like you are yet to demonstrate how it is particularly parasitic.

Edit: I mean honest covers; modifying a song a little bit and passing it as original should be very sueable by the rights holder and I would be very surprised if Spotify decided to do that even if they fired their entire legal department and replaced it with one LLM chatbot.

[zvr]

I know of restaurants and bars that choose to play cover versions of well-known songs because the costs are so much less.

[strogonoff]

I really doubt you would ever license any specific songs as a cafe business. You should be able to pay a fixed fee to a PRO and have a blanket license to play almost anything. Is it so expensive in the US, or perhaps they do not know that this is an option? If the former, and those cover artists help those bars keep their expenses low and offer you better experience while charging less—working with the system, without ripping off the original artists who still get paid their royalty—does it seem particularly parasitic?

[zvr]

The example I was referring to was not in the US.

A restaurant / cafe may pay a fixed fee and get access to a specific catalog of songs (performances). The fee depends on what the catalog contains. As you can imagine, paying for the right to only play instrumental versions of songs (no singers, no lyrics) is significantly cheaper. Or, having performances of songs by unknown people.

[strogonoff]

Two countries where I know how it works from a venue business owner perspective work this way. The fees seemed pretty mild, that’s why I asked if it’s too expensive in your country (which I guess is not US).