Im sorry, but playing a CD in a bar isn't "giving it away for free" because no one gest a copy they an take with them. It doesn't go home with them. It doesnt magically appear playing on their stereo. With this argument you present, ASCAP would have a right to require anyone who hears music pay a constant fee to them because they may remember it and hum it in their head.
I buy a CD, I play it for people - not give them a copy - they are more likely to purchase it than if they hadn't heard it(obviously). This isn't like a razor, or a toothbrush that is a consumer item many buy with limited or little knowledge of. People buy music because they have heard it and like it. No public performance, no sales. Its real simple.
And simpler still: If I control the copyright, *I* decide when it is given away and when it is subject to a fee. It's not up to you to "work in my best interest" by performing my work for your own profits. Again, why do you feel entitled to play a musician's work in your business for the sole purpose of increasing your business' profitability?
As for the idea that just because you don't get a physical copy, it isn't giving it away -- you're wrong. That's like saying that if I show a movie without paying rights, and let you leave without providing a videotaped copy, I'm not breaking the law.
Here's the simplest way to put it: You don't deserve to make money from my work without paying me for it. If my prices are too high, go somewhere else. I'll make my own business decisions, and fail or prosper the same as anyone else. But in the meantime, nobody deserves to improve their business by using something I thought up and copyrighted.
Faulty reasoning. If a retailer sells CD's and makes it possible for people to hear before they buy, they are not breaking copyright law, because if the people hear the CD and then buy it, the artist gets a royalty from the sale of the CD. In a bar or restaurant, the music is played to enhance the atmosphere, making the place more appealing to patronize. The artist got a royalty off the sale of the CD, but copyright law states that public performance (playing the CD in a public area where many people can hear it) requires a fee to be collected to be distributed to artists under a formula that has been worked out and agreed to by the artists, the recording companies, and the publishers as a fair compromise to compensate the artsist and publishers for the use of their work in the course of doing business to increase sales and therefore profits.
I am a performing musician myself, and I know that the bars and other establishments I play in pay the ASCAP (and/or BMI) fee, usually in conjuction with the lease of the jukebox they have on premises, and that fee also covers bands playing cover tunes, such as the band I play in. It's just a fact of business.