Is your karaoke business in legal trouble before it even begins?

In the Metallica vs. Napster copyright infringement lawsuit of 2000, the band fought against the sharing and copying of their music without permission. While karaoke is hardly akin to peer-to-peer file sharing, singing along to recorded music with the help of a teleprompter involves the performance of artists’ copyrighted works. How often the songs are played, how they are sung, and whether the performance is recorded are all part of copyright law – and relevant to any business that uses karaoke.