I feel like one of the problems here is that we don't have some concept of "license exhaustion." There needs to be a point where we can say "you got paid once

I feel like one of the problems here is that we don't have some concept of "license exhaustion." There needs to be a point where we can say "you got paid once for this, and you can't keep inventing new fragmentary rights and segmentations to get another bite at the same apple." It feels like that point should be when Stern paid to include the songs in the machine.. That minimizes the burden on everyone else, trying to guess what is permissible and having to cut things up to satisfy the licensing bureaucracy. It reminds me of the situation where we have crappy TV box sets where the music gets replaced because the concept of a home-video release wasn't even on the radar to consider when the original series was prepared and paid for. Again, the license should have been paid for and exhausted at that point. I really believe the ultimate answer is a mandatory (presumably state-run) IP clearinghouse-- whether you want to pay 10 cents to buy cover for the neighbour's TV audio bleeding into your livestream, or a bajillion dollars for "every movie ever made" to populate your streaming service, there should be a way to cut out the complexity of "who do I speak with" and "what do I do if they're dead/unreachable/intentionally uncooperative". Twitch writes a cheque for a few hundred grand a month to for blanket coverage, and the IP cartels fight behind the scenes to slice it up.