Legalized extortion? DTM music venue owners sound off on licensing fees

"When I first opened I didn't have any idea about ASCAP - even moving from Nashville and seeing the big beautiful building with ASCAP proudly displayed atop it, I didn't know what it was," says Fellini's owner Jacie Dunkle.

Ask most people, even those who like to listen to live music on the DTM, what ASCAP, BMI, and SESACO are, and you'll most likely get a blank stare. Ask a DTM music venue owner, however, and you'll get an earful. And don't be surprised if there's some gnashing of teeth and clenching of fists. Of all the potential hassles of hosting live music on the DTM, you'd think that battling multi-million dollar music organizations wouldn't be one of them. But it is.

About a year after Fellini's owner Jacie Dunkle began hosting live music she got a visit from a representative of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), who told her, in so many words, that if she didn't pay the organization a yearly licensing fee for the right to have live music she coul…