Legal Question in Business Law in Illinois

Re: Should I start an SCorp., LLC or ???

Conducting different businesses within a single entity is generally permitted. Unless you are conducting certain types business with special requirements (insurance, banking and certain professions, for example), there is nothing to prevent you from operating them all under a single umbrella. However, if something goes wrong, as you learned, having all your assets exposed in a single entity can be catastrophic.

Separating different businesses into different entities to protect the assets of the different businesses often makes sense, but you have to weigh the risks versus the costs. If your businesses are basically conduits for providing services and the businesses will never have significant assets, and if the risks are fairly remote, there may be little benefit to forming separate entities.

In general, I do recommend using separate entities. There are both advantages and disadvantages to selecting an LLC or an S corporation for your entity of choice. I suggest you read the article "LLC vs S Corporation."

Illinois is also one of the few states that has enacted legislation permitting the use of a Series LLC, which can bring down the cost of each LLC to some extent.

As to your question on licensing music, I suggest that you visit the ASCAP and BMI web sites to understand how the process works.

David K. Staub, an Illinois business attorney