ASCAP Lawsuit: Venues, Radio Broadcasters, and $123M Suit

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is fighting on two fronts in 2025 and 2026. On offense, ASCAP has filed waves of copyright infringement suits against bars, restaurants, and small radio broadcasters that play music without a license. On defense, a group of production music publishers has sued ASCAP itself for $123 million, alleging the organization systematically underpays royalties for stock music used on news, talk, and sports radio. Any current ASCAP lawsuit falls into one of those two buckets.

Suits Against Bars, Restaurants, and Music Venues

ASCAP files its venue cases in coordinated batches. It sued 15 businesses in June 2025, another 10 in October 2025, and 11 more in March 2026.{¹}{} The March 2026 wave named venues in Florida, Arkansas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Nevada, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri, and Kansas.{²} Additional suits have followed, including one filed in October 2026 against The Water Tank Bar & Grill in Austin, Texas.{³}

The complaints follow a common template. ASCAP identifies specific songs performed on a specific date at the venue, then documents how many times it tried to sell the owner a license before suing. In the June 2025 case against Pono Ranch in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, ASCAP alleged unauthorized performances of Radiohead’s “Creep” and Stone Temple Pilots’ “Plush” on April 24, 2025.{⁴} In the March 2026 case against New Orleans venue Garage Music Club, the songs were 38 Special’s “Hold on Loosely” and Styx’s “Too Much Time on My Hands,” performed at a karaoke night on September 25, 2025. ASCAP said it had contacted owner Guy Olano III more than 80 times since December 2022 to offer a license.{⁵}

ASCAP describes litigation as a last resort after letters, emails, and phone calls to the owner have gone unanswered.{⁶} An ASCAP spokesperson has noted that most of these cases end in settlement rather than trial.{³}

Suits Against Radio Broadcasters

On June 9, 2026, ASCAP expanded its enforcement to radio, filing federal copyright infringement suits against four small radio groups that operate 15 stations combined.{⁷} Each group had let its ASCAP license lapse for nonpayment and, according to the complaints, kept playing ASCAP-controlled music anyway.

Haugo Broadcasting, owned by Christian Haugo, with three stations near Rapid City, South Dakota. License terminated April 9, 2024; ASCAP documented 14 acts of infringement.{}⁸
Spoon River Media, owned by Matthew Moore, operating WCOE and WLOI in Indiana and WILP-FM and WBYS in Illinois. ASCAP alleged the group had operated without a license since November 2023.{}⁸
Radio New England Broadcast Group (White Mountains Broadcasting), operating WOXX, WOTX, WKDR, WLTN, WXXS, and WMOU in northern New England. Licenses terminated in May 2024; the complaint cited unauthorized airings of songs including “Renegade” and “L.A. Woman” as recently as April 2026.{}⁸
Taylor Communications, owned by Jason Plunk, operating “Bullseye 95.5” (WOXD) in Oxford, Mississippi. License terminated January 22, 2026 after more than three years of delinquent fees; ASCAP documented 11 unauthorized performances over three days in April 2026.{}⁸

ASCAP Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Business Affairs Officer Clara Kim called the suits “a last resort,” saying: “When a station refuses to pay for the music that makes their business possible, we have a responsibility to our members to take action.”{¹} None of the four defendants had publicly responded as of June 2026.{⁹}

The $123 Million Lawsuit Against ASCAP

On December 16, 2025, a group of production music publishers and writers sued ASCAP in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, seeking $123 million.{¹⁰} Lead plaintiff Alibi Music was joined by Capp Records, Cushman Entertainment Ltd., Epic Music LA, Terese Hanses, Lab Hits LLC, Manhattan Production Music, Rock Talk Inc., Slipstream ICPO LLC, Songs To Your Eyes, and The Brian Nimens Corp. Ltd. The group is represented by attorney Richard Busch.{¹¹}

Production music, also called stock or library music, is the short instrumental material used for bumpers, transitions, theme beds, and background on news, sports, and talk radio. It runs underneath or alongside spoken content rather than anchoring a playlist. The plaintiffs allege ASCAP treats this “non-feature” music as a “second-class citizen” and has diverted roughly $15.4 million per year in radio royalties away from production music owners, totaling $123 million over eight years.{¹⁰}

The complaint challenges two specific mechanisms. The first is ASCAP’s “weighting formula,” a board-approved system that assigns different values to feature and non-feature music when distributing radio royalties. The plaintiffs allege the formula is designed to channel money toward feature music publishers, whose representatives dominate ASCAP’s board.{} The second is detection. The suit alleges ASCAP relies on 16 kbps audio feeds from a service called Media Monitors, a quality the plaintiffs describe as too low for reliable identification, and on a fingerprinting tool called Soundmouse that cannot recognize music played underneath spoken word, which is how production music is almost always used on talk and news stations.{¹⁰}

Citing data from a tracking platform called SourceAudio, the complaint claims that between 2021 and 2024, ASCAP-affiliated non-feature songwriters and publishers were paid for only 0.1% of their actual radio performances. As one example, the suit alleges New York’s 1010 WINS aired 41,597 production music performances in 2021 for which ASCAP paid on “exactly zero.”{¹¹}

ASCAP has denied the claims. “These allegations are baseless,” the organization said. “ASCAP operates on a not-for-profit basis and ASCAP follows its publicly available distribution policies, which are fair, transparent and set by its member-elected Board of Directors.”{¹¹} The case is pending.

What Defendants in the Venue and Radio Suits Face

Under the U.S. Copyright Act, statutory damages for the unauthorized public performance of a copyrighted song run from $750 to $30,000 per work. If a court finds the infringement was willful, meaning the defendant knew it was infringing, damages can reach $150,000 per work.{} A court can also issue an injunction barring further infringement and order the losing party to pay the copyright owner’s attorney’s fees.{¹²}

Trials are rare. Most ASCAP venue cases settle privately, often for back-payment fees that can exceed triple the annual licensing rate the business would have paid had it simply taken the license.{³}

Why These Businesses Owed ASCAP Anything in the First Place

Under U.S. copyright law, any business that plays music in a place open to the public — through a live band, DJ, jukebox, karaoke setup, or radio — needs permission from the copyright holders. Buying a CD, a download, or a personal streaming subscription covers only personal use, not commercial performance.{} ASCAP sells a blanket license, a single annual fee that covers any song in its catalog. For bars and restaurants, that fee averages less than two dollars a day, typically ranging from about $326 to $1,710 depending on venue size, capacity, and how music is used.{⁶}

A narrow exemption exists for very small establishments that use only a single “homestyle” radio or TV receiver: food and drinking establishments under 3,750 square feet and other businesses under 2,000 square feet can play broadcast radio or TV without a license, if they meet strict equipment limits and charge no admission.{¹³} An ASCAP license also does not cover songs controlled by other performing rights organizations. BMI, SESAC, and GMR each represent separate, non-overlapping catalogs, and a venue may need licenses from more than one.{¹⁴}

Why Most Radio Stations Aren’t Being Sued

The four radio groups sued in June 2026 sit outside an industry-wide licensing deal that covers nearly everyone else. In August 2025, ASCAP and the Radio Music License Committee settled a rate dispute covering nearly 10,000 commercial AM/FM stations through 2029, retroactive to January 1, 2022.{¹⁵} The deal uses a percentage-of-revenue fee structure with annual increases, covers over-the-air and HD multicasting, simulcast and website transmissions, podcasts, and archived content, and includes an alternative per-program license for talk-formatted stations. It does not cover on-demand or customized streaming.{¹⁶} The Haugo, Spoon River, Radio New England, and Taylor stations had refused to participate and let their individual licenses lapse.{¹}

ASCAP’s power to license, and the ceiling on that power, comes from a 1941 antitrust consent decree entered in United States v. ASCAP in the Southern District of New York, most recently amended in 2001.{¹⁷} The decree requires ASCAP to license its catalog to anyone who asks and designates a federal judge in the Southern District of New York as a “rate court” that can set licensing fees when ASCAP and a would-be licensee can’t agree.{¹⁸} BMI operates under a parallel decree; SESAC and GMR do not.{¹⁴} That framework is what allows ASCAP to sell a single blanket license, and it’s also what forces the organization back into court when a business refuses to buy one.

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Inside Radio. ASCAP Targets Radio Groups in Copyright Infringement Suits
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Billboard. ASCAP Faces $123M Lawsuit Over Stock Music, News and Sports Radio
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Music Business Worldwide. ASCAP Secures Higher Rates in Settlement With US Radio Broadcasters
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U.S. Department of Justice. Antitrust Consent Decree Review — ASCAP and BMI
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