The U.S. does have these laws. There can be many different rights in a musical work that require licenses, in this case it appears to be a performance license. If you don't own the performance rights to a song (artists can sell theses rights), you have to buy a license from the owner of the copyright. Paul McCartney has to pay license fees to do concerts in the U.S. because Michael Jackson owns the performance rights to the Beatles catalog.
Virtually every artist who has ever released a tune on a major label in America is a member of either BMI or ASCAP, which collect performance royalties (the same ones that radio stations pay). I don't know about British law, but under American law I don't think a DJ would be require to pay these royalties if he played only his own songs and he had not sold the performance copyrights to those songs.
BMI and ASCAP have employees who go to bars and other places where songs by their artists may be performed, so it actually is enforced. As I mentioned earlier, virtually every artist belongs to one or the other. They're pretty fair about it--they're give three or four warnings before they take legal action. However, dance music is still pretty underground in America in comparison to, well, just about every other kind of music so a lot of these tunes aren't registered with either BMI or ASCAP. Accordingly, a search on both those sites turned up nothing for Tiesto, Paul van Dyk or Markus Schulz so you could play their songs in American clubs with impunity.
FYI, a "public performance," which would be one that requires these royalties to be paid, is considered to be a group of people outside of the normal a person's normal group of family and friends.

Nerdbomber, over and out.

Pretty good explanation you have there and pretty accurate. When a DJ plays in a club in the US, it's considered a rebroadcast of a song which is technically illegal (yet rarely enforced.) Most DJs don't even think about the laws behind it but there are surely some do...well, the major DJs do. I've been around people who've been asked for an idea of tracklists a certain DJ performs so proper royalties can be paid.

To the person who said radio stations have to be 2 cents ($0.02) per track, there's more to it than that usually. Lots of times, it's so much per song per listener. Other times, especially at the beginning of an artist's release, stations are excused of royalty fees because the record label/artist/etc are more worried about getting their track exposed over sales. After a little exposure, tides turn and then stations work on the royatlies. This doesn't happen often, but will happen sometimes with new artists in bigger markets.

Personally, I got in a whole mess of trouble in the mid-90s because of a project I did where with it I played a track from a disney movie at Siggraph. Well, happens that Disney was there, heard it and got really pissed off. They have fair-use policies of their own and I was ten seconds over what their personal policy states. So what they tried to do? Make me pay $10,000. Once I explained to them that I was just a student showing off a project I did in high school, they just made me agree not to use their music in my project no longer and that was that.

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Originally posted by lacksesepsotygh djs in sweden aren't even allowed to copy their original cd, and play that out. they must bring the originals. i wonder what will happen to the big name djs visiting sweden

wtf? didnt know that, although im not a DJ
I just wonder, if I buy a mp3 online, can't I play it out?
it just doesnt make any sense to me, I buy a mp3 online for example, and bring it to the masses, how can that be bad (illegal) for the author of the song? maybe im just retarded

money money money, the spawn of satan

I'd like to see whoever are gonna enforce this rubbish turn off the sound system midset. Guaranteed he won't be leaving the club venue alive!

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