Music, TV and sports licensing for restaurants and bars

This is the requirement operators most often discover by letter. Nothing on this page will fail a health inspection, and none of it is enforced by any agency in Ohio — which is exactly why it gets skipped. The people who enforce it are private, they are patient, and they send invoices.

The short version: the account type is the whole question. Almost every service discussed here has a consumer tier that is not legal in your dining room and a business tier that is.

Music: no, you cannot use your Spotify playlist

Consumer streaming accounts are personal use only, and their terms say so. Spotify prohibits public or commercial play in bars, restaurants, stores and similar businesses.¹ Premium removes the ads; it does not change the license you hold. Consumer Apple Music, Pandora and YouTube Music are the same.

The reason is not fussiness. Personal listening and commercial play are licensed at different rates, because a playlist in your dining room reaches a room full of paying customers rather than one person.

What you actually need

Playing music publicly requires public performance rights, licensed through performing rights organizations. In the United States there are four:²

ASCAP · BMI · SESAC · GMR

Each represents a different catalog of songwriters, and a license from one does not cover the others’ repertory.² Full coverage means all four, which is four contracts, four invoices and four renewal dates.

Which is why the answer to your question is yes — with one word changed

A commercial background music service pays the performing rights organizations on your behalf.⁸ SiriusXM Music for Business, Mood Media (formerly Muzak), Soundtrack, Cloud Cover and Rockbot all work this way. One vendor, one invoice, licensing included.

So: yes, you can use SiriusXM — the business product, not the consumer subscription. Same brand, different account, entirely different legal position. That distinction is the single most useful thing on this page.

What it does not cover is anything the service does not supply. Still yours to license:⁸

• Live bands and DJs
• Karaoke
• A staff phone on the aux cord — the most common failure, and invisible until someone notices
• A jukebox on a separate contract

A commercial music service solves background music. It does not solve a Friday night band.

TV and radio: the exemption most small operators qualify for

Here the law is unusually generous, and most operators do not know it exists.

Federal copyright law exempts food service and drinking establishments under 3,750 gross square feet, excluding parking, that play ordinary broadcast radio or television. Under that size there is no license required and no limit on the number of speakers or the number and size of televisions.³⁴

“Establishment” means the whole establishment, excluding space used for customer parking and for no other purpose. It is not the size of the room the television is in — a 6,000 square foot restaurant does not qualify just because its bar happens to be small.⁴

Above the threshold the exemption still applies, but equipment limits kick in, and for televisions they are tighter than most people expect:⁴

Read the second row again if you are planning a sports bar. One television per room, nothing over 55 inches is not what most people picture when they hear there is an exemption.

Non-dining businesses get the same structure at a 2,000 gross square foot threshold.⁴

Four conditions decide whether this covers you at all:⁴

1. It exempts nondramatic musical works — the music carried in the broadcast. It is a music exemption that happens to cover the set the music is coming out of, not general permission to screen whatever is on.
2. The transmission must originate from an FCC-licensed broadcast station — or, if audiovisual, from a cable system or satellite carrier. Subscription streaming services are neither.³
3. No direct charge to see or hear it. A cover charge for the game defeats the exemption.
4. It must not be further transmitted beyond the establishment. Piping the feed to a second location is a different act.

Measure the whole place before you assume either way. 3,750 square feet is a large restaurant, so most independents in this market are comfortably inside it — and are paying attention to a rule that may not apply to their radio and TV at all.

Movies and streaming: no, and there is no license to buy

Netflix cannot be shown in your business, and you cannot fix it with money. Consumer terms are personal and non-commercial, and Netflix does not sell public performance licenses to restaurants because its own content deals do not permit it. There is no business tier to upgrade to.

The same applies to consumer Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Hulu and Peacock accounts.⁵ The streaming subscription in your pocket is licensed for your household.

If you want to show films — a movie night, a patio screening, films on a loop — the route is an umbrella public performance license, from the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation or a comparable licensor, covering the studios whose work you intend to show.⁵

Sports: the one worth getting right

Sports is where the enforcement is real, the money is large, and the rules move season to season.

The route is a commercial account. Not a consumer subscription showing on a bigger screen.⁷

• NFL Sunday Ticket is available to commercial venues through DIRECTV for Business from the 2026 season, under an agreement running through at least 2028.⁷
• Thursday Night Football reaches venues through DIRECTV for Business as well, under an arrangement with Amazon — not through the consumer Prime Video app.⁷
• Commercial accounts also exist for ESPN+, Peacock and others, and EverPass licenses venue rights for several properties.

The number that should end the argument. Taking a signal on a residential account and showing it commercially falls under 47 U.S.C. 605, which sets statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000 per violation — and where the court finds the violation was willful and for commercial advantage, allows an increase of up to a further $100,000 per violation.⁶ That is where the widely quoted $110,000 figure comes from, and “willful and for commercial advantage” is not a hard case to make against a bar showing a game it did not pay venue rates for.

The statute cuts the other way too: where the violator had no reason to believe the act was a violation, damages may be reduced to as little as $250.⁶ Which is precisely why knowing the rule is worse than not knowing it, if you then ignore it.

Sports rights also change hands constantly — packages move between broadcasters most years. If a season matters to your business, confirm who holds the rights and what the venue license costs before you build a promotion around it.

What to do

1. If you play background music, get a commercial music service. One vendor, licensing included, and it removes four separate PRO relationships.
2. If you have live music, DJs or karaoke, that is separate. Ask the service what it does not cover, and price the PRO licenses for what is left.
3. Measure your dining room. Under 3,750 square feet, broadcast radio and TV may need no license at all.
4. Take the consumer streaming apps off the bar TVs. There is no version of Netflix or a personal Prime account that is legal in a public room.
5. If sports is part of the concept, price the commercial account into the business plan, not into the first season’s surprises.
6. Keep the paperwork. PRO invoices and commercial account agreements are what end a dispute quickly.

This is a summary of a private licensing regime, not a regulation your health district enforces, and it is an area where the specifics turn on your square footage, your equipment and your programming. Nothing here is legal advice. Confirm with the licensor before you commit — and if you are already receiving letters, that is a conversation for a lawyer who works in this area rather than a web page.