There is no ACCOUNTING of what songs are being played in the bar therefore there is no distribution to the songwriter.
WB sends goons in to audit the lists periodically but not daily. If you haven’t paid up your protection fee, you will be threatened with lawsuit.
Yeah, my brother in-law owned a restaurant with a bar.
They audit how many speakers you have, how many TVs you have and others (Karoke,etc). Then the capacity of the establishment is factored in.
Often, they make their assessment from your website; they rarely travel to the actual location. In the case of my brother-in-law’s place, this has been grossly overestimated (a seating capacity of 40 was estimated as 350-400)
They charge a flat fee, depending on the percentage of the industry that they represent.
The smaller ones aren’t worth paying - they just don’t have the muscle. The biggest one (I forgot the name), which represents well over half of the registered artists, has been very aggressive in its collections.