It’s called a Public Performance License, and virtually any commercial use of recorded music needs to have one. But once you do, and pay the licence fee, there’s not much the artist can do (except bitch, of course). It’s why the PPL was created, clearly no performer has time to deal with the countless bars, clubs, malls, etc who play their music and equally none of those entities could possibly arrange deals with thousands of artists.
They try to say political use is different but it’s not, really. A good way to waste some of their money however instead of giving it to bad candidates.
https://www.ascap.com/help/ascap-licensing
While waiting in line at funeral service I looked in door of where the music was being played. There were stickers for BMI and ASCAP indicating that every time they played music that wasn’t in the public domain, someone got a check.