So, if you own a restaurant and you pay your staff to sing a song on a patron's birthday, then because money exchanges hands for this service as part of their job, they can't sing anything under copyright protection without paying the royalties.
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Tell your server. If you make a reservation and mention a birthday celebration, the server doesn't see your reservation, the host will only sit the table. The best way is to tell the server yourself. Remember, the servers that will accompany your server to sing, also have tables to take care of.
Waiting to tell your server until they first approach the table can seem cloyingly desperate, so consider notifying the staff ahead of time — mention it when making the reservation over the phone, or indicate the birthday online if the restaurant or reservation site asks if you're celebrating anything.
Later, the 2003 documentary, The Corporation, noted that Warner charged as high as $10,000 (€9,400) for the song to appear in a film. This all made the song the highest-earning single song in history, collecting an estimated $2 million (€1.8 million) a year in licensing fees.