This topic in many ways reminds me of the struggles the oft-maligned IMVU went through with people playing music in public rooms. In the old clients, circa 2007 or so, developers could simply create products that were mp3's and just did. Violating all sorts of licensing issues (regardless of where they got their recordings from). Somewhere along the line IMVU (based out of Mountainview, California) got hit pretty hard and instituted a new system that made such development impossible and forced all users to purchase music directly from the IMVU site in an effort to address obvious licensing violations. These days, regardless of whether you have purchased a copy of a track in your own collection or not, you must purchase it again via imvu to stream it in the client. Even doing so there are restrictions: no more than 2 tracks from a particular artist in a play list, and if you are in the US it's quite likely that many tracks you have purchased will not play for people in your room from different regions. It can suck, but I suppose this is how IMVU is keeping themselves out of trouble these days. As I haven't gone there in quite some time, i'm not sure if it has changed any, but my guess is that it hasn't. I cannot even fathom (nor do I wish to go down the rabbit hole) of all that is required to be a "legal" DJ, and give all the props in the world to those who do. In my case, when I host and stream music publicly (not often) every commercially available recording I play, I have purchased and exists in my collection as such. That said, as noble-sounding as that may be, I understand that doesn't address the legality of streaming anything in a public setting. However, many of my mixes consist of non-commercially available live recordings (ROIO's or "Recording Of Indeterminate/Illegitimate Origin") made by others or myself (old school "taper" who mixed and mastered recordings here) and there is some grey area that can and has been debated for years. That said, old school "honorable" tapers always went by the notion that if it is not available commercially anywhere, and nobody is gaining or losing a profit (the latter part can be debated) that it is safe to release those recordings. I suppose I translate that, perhaps incorrectly, in the streaming world as similar. Again, grey area. Anyway, just my random thoughts on this interesting subject.
