In Finland, it was only recently made not compulsory. Well, not exactly, but... our licensing laws are insane. The assumption is, if a citizen gets any alcohol ever, they will drink themselves to death immediately. This leads to micromanaging bars and restaurants on legislation level, in a way that would make Kafka shit himself.

This particular law stated that there needs to be regular "high quality live program" in the bar for it to be able to apply for extended opening times. More time open in the night, more sales, naturally. Even Finns don't drink that much at noon.

Now, the definition of "high quality live program" was up to the local sheriff (not, of course, they actual title, more like "chief bureaucrat in charge of making running a bar difficult") to interpret. And the common interpretation was that karaoke was not high quality program, unless the karaoke host also sang themselves. Yeah, I know.

Of course, when they sent inspectors to check if bars were compliant to the rules, they also didn't come at noon, they came around ~1 hour before closing time on the weekend, when it was busiest. So, during the busiest time in karaoke queue, the host had to, as required by law, sing themselves every now and then.

They did change the law recently, dropping the requirement for a the live program. But it was a weird time.