Licensing for DJ’s
Do you need some sort of license to perform live music when you’re opening an event? Does all the music need to be purchased? are there strict copyright laws..? how does this work?
It depends on your country etc but basically you don’t need to worry about it. Just pay for your music.
Depends where you are. I think most venues pay for a blanket license that goes back to the labels.
As for music being purchased that will cause some tension in here- in short- no one will check or be able to tell if you bought your music or not, and probably wouldn’t care anyway. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t purchase your music though or that playing out with all pirated stuff is the right thing to do.
The bottom line- don’t worry about it.
like jester said, just make sure you buy all of your music from a reputable source and you should be fine, here in the uk, ther is the prs and the ppl (christ knows how they get away with charging what they do) but it’s the venue’s responsibility to pay the fees.
Here it’s rightabout the opposite. You pay to two instances by the number of tracks you have with you (in a computer) and they don’t give a f?ck bout the rest. 
in the United States the venue pays the licensing fees.
however, the DJ is still required to pay for music legally.
I’m in Canada. So basically I can go still go about my merry way downloading my music if there’s a LINK for it and play it at live shows? I just want to make sure I don’t have to pay for all my tracks because I could easily play over 50-60 songs in a set amirite?
Support the artists because it’s the right thing to do not because it’s the law.
I know what you mean, thanks for clearing that up for me, thanks guys
I’m pretty sure that the legislation hasn’t changed in the week or so since somebody last asked this question.
Anyway, look what I found on the internet:
/thread
if your getting PAID to dj, then you ONLY play the songs you purchased.
I’m in Canada too, venue pays for licensing, I don’t know about open shows though. Ie. in a farmers field but I assume you would need the license. Like it has been said a billion times here already, if you want to play it, pay for it. There’s guys on this forum that spend countless hours making tracks from scratch, you wouldn’t want to rip them off…