Background music licensing: a guide for commercial venues

How licensing works across the UK, US, Germany, France and Australia — and the modern way to handle it.

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Most venues think they’re compliant on music licensing. Many aren’t.

The manager pays a Spotify Premium subscription, hooks up the in-house speakers, and assumes the monthly fee covers it. It doesn’t. Or the bar plays the radio and believes the broadcaster has handled the licensing. It hasn’t — not for the venue. Or a multi-site retailer pays one society and assumes a single licence covers every territory they trade in. It rarely does.

Background music licensing is one of the most consistently misunderstood obligations in commercial operations, and the gap between what venues think they owe and what they actually owe is exactly where enforcement happens.

This guide explains how it works across five of the largest commercial markets — the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France and Australia. It covers what rights exist, who administers them, and how a venue can be confident it is properly licensed.

It closes with the most operationally clean way to handle the question in practice: not by paying every society directly, but by using a commercial music service that bundles licensing into the subscription, deployed across a multi-zone venue in a way that respects how the venue actually operates.

This is not legal advice. For specific situations, contact the relevant collecting society or a qualified intellectual property lawyer.

How music licensing actually works

Every piece of recorded music carries two distinct rights. Both are protected by copyright. Both have to be licensed if the music is played in a commercial setting.

The first is the publishing right — the right to the composition itself. The melody, the lyrics, the underlying musical work. This belongs to the songwriter and the music publisher. When a venue plays a recording of any popular song, the people who wrote that song are owed payment.

The second is the master right — the right to the specific recording. The performance, the production, the actual audio file. This belongs to the performing artist and the record label. The recording playing in the bar — whoever made that recording is owed payment too.

Both rights exist independently. Licensing one does not license the other. A venue that pays for publishing rights but not master rights is half-licensed. A venue that pays for neither is operating illegally.

This is where collecting societies come in. Tracking down every songwriter and every record label individually would be impossible, so the music industry organises into collecting societies — non-profit (mostly) organisations that license music in bulk on behalf of their members, collect the fees, and distribute royalties back to the rights holders. Some societies handle composition rights. Others handle master rights. Some markets have consolidated these into a single licence; others require separate licences from separate societies.

The other concept worth understanding is public performance. Playing music in your home for yourself or your friends is not a public performance. Playing music in a bar, gym, hotel lobby, retail floor or office where staff and customers can hear it is a public performance — even if the music is just background atmosphere, even if no-one is dancing, even if it’s playing quietly behind a counter.

Public performance is what triggers the licensing obligation. It is also why playing a personal Spotify subscription, an Apple Music account, or any other consumer streaming service in a commercial venue is almost never compliant. Those services are licensed for personal use, not commercial use. Their terms of service typically prohibit commercial use explicitly. The fact that the music plays through your speakers is irrelevant — what matters is who is hearing it, and in what context.

The answer to “do I need a licence to play music in my venue” is, in almost every case, yes.

Market by market

UNITED KINGDOM

AT A GLANCE — UNITED KINGDOM
Composition society	PRS for Music
Master society	PPL
Consolidated licence?	Yes — TheMusicLicence joint scheme
Practical default	TheMusicLicence direct, OR commercial music service

The UK has one of the simplest models in the markets covered by this guide.

Two collecting societies handle music rights for commercial venues. PRS for Music administers publishing rights on behalf of songwriters, composers and music publishers. PPL administers master rights on behalf of performing artists and record labels. Both have existed for decades, both have established enforcement operations, and both have visibility on which venues are operating without licences.

Since 2018, PRS and PPL have offered a joint scheme called TheMusicLicence. Administered through a single application, with a single annual fee, the licence covers both rights — meaning a UK venue making a single annual payment is properly licensed for both composition and master rights for almost any recorded music played on the premises.

This consolidation matters. In most other markets covered here, a venue has to license each right separately, sometimes from multiple societies. The UK model is unusually clean by international standards, and venue operators sometimes underestimate how much administrative friction the joint scheme has removed.

What it covers
TheMusicLicence covers recorded music played in business premises — background music, music on hold, music played at events, music played from radio or television (yes, even if the TV is showing a football match, the music in the broadcast is licensed via this scheme), and music played from streaming services where those services have been licensed for commercial use.

How fees are calculated
Fees are scaled by venue type and characteristics — number of rooms, audience capacity, opening hours, whether music is foreground or background. A small café pays significantly less than a large hospitality complex. The pricing model is published on TheMusicLicence website and updated annually.

Enforcement profile
Both PRS and PPL operate active enforcement teams. They visit venues, follow up reports, and pursue unlicensed operators through civil action. The cost of enforcement penalties typically far exceeds the cost of the licence itself, before legal fees are added.

Common pitfalls
Three traps catch UK venues consistently. First — assuming a personal Spotify or Apple Music subscription is sufficient (it isn’t). Second — assuming the radio station’s broadcast licence covers the venue (it doesn’t; the broadcaster is licensed to broadcast, the venue separately needs to be licensed to publicly play that broadcast). Third — multi-site operators assuming a single licence covers all branches, when fees actually scale per location.

The takeaway: TheMusicLicence is the right starting point for almost every UK commercial venue. The cost is predictable. The administration is minimal. The compliance position is clear.

UNITED STATES

AT A GLANCE — UNITED STATES
Composition society	ASCAP, BMI, SESAC (+ GMR)
Master society	Direct label / SoundExchange (digital)
Consolidated licence?	No — separate societies, separate fees
Practical default	Commercial music service (managing PROs directly is impractical for most venues)

The US market is the most complex in this guide, for two structural reasons.

The first is that publishing rights are administered not by a single society but by three — ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and SESAC. ASCAP and BMI are the two largest, both founded over a century ago, and each represents roughly half of the songwriters and publishers in active circulation. SESAC is smaller, privately held rather than non-profit, and represents a curated catalogue of writers who chose it specifically. A fourth society, Global Music Rights (GMR), founded in 2013, represents a small but high-profile catalogue.

Because no single society can grant rights to the others’ catalogues, and because a venue cannot reliably know which songs in any given playlist belong to which society, the practical position is that a US venue playing varied recorded music needs licences from at least ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. GMR is often added on top. This is the standard structural cost of compliance in the US market for the publishing side alone.

The second reason for complexity is on the master rights side, and this is where the US is genuinely unusual.

Under US copyright law, terrestrial broadcasters and many in-venue performers of recordings have historically not been required to pay master rights royalties — only publishing royalties. This is unlike almost every other major market in the world. The exception was created in the early broadcast era and has survived despite decades of lobbying by the recording industry to close it.

Digital performance is treated differently — SoundExchange administers digital performance royalties for non-interactive streaming — but for a typical bar or restaurant playing music through in-venue speakers, master rights have historically been outside the licensing framework.

In practice, this changes when a venue uses a commercial music service rather than personal music sources. Services like Soundtrack Your Brand and Mood Media hold direct agreements with record labels covering master rights for the music in their catalogues, so a venue using one of those services is covered for both composition (via the PROs, often paid through the service) and master rights (via the service’s direct label agreements).

Fees and enforcement
PRO fees in the US are scaled by venue size, capacity and music usage. Combined annual fees from the three (or four) PROs can be significantly higher than a comparable UK licence, but the marginal cost of adding each PRO licence is typically modest once the first is in place. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC all run active enforcement operations and the litigation history in this market is extensive — a US venue without PRO licences should treat that position as untenable.

Common pitfalls
Assuming Pandora Business or other “business music” services cover all PRO obligations (some do, some require additional licences). Assuming that paying one PRO covers the others (it doesn’t, and the playlist will overlap multiple PROs whether the operator realises or not). Failing to consider master rights when using a personal music source rather than a commercial service.

The takeaway: in the US, the structural answer for almost every commercial venue is to use a commercial music service that bundles publishing licensing across all PROs and handles master rights via direct label agreements. Doing this independently is theoretically possible but operationally impractical.

GERMANY

AT A GLANCE — GERMANY
Composition society	GEMA
Master society	GVL
Consolidated licence?	No — separate societies, separate fees
Practical default	Either route workable; commercial service simplifies admin

Germany operates a clear two-society model with a reputation for active and detailed enforcement.

GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte) administers publishing rights on behalf of composers, lyricists and publishers. It is one of the oldest and largest collecting societies in the world, with a presence in the German music industry going back to the late 19th century.

GVL (Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten) administers neighbouring rights — the German legal framework’s term for performers’ and producers’ rights, equivalent in practice to master rights elsewhere. GVL represents performing artists and record labels.
Both licences are required for venues playing recorded music. Unlike the UK’s joint scheme, German venues must license both separately, deal with both administrations, and pay both annual fees.

GEMA’s tariff structure is detailed. Different categories of venue (restaurants, bars, hotels, retail, gyms, hairdressers, dental practices and many more) have specific tariffs, and within each category, fees scale by floor area, opening hours, foreground or background music, and other characteristics. The tariff documents are public and itemised.

For very small operations the fees are modest; for larger venues they can be substantial.
GVL fees are typically a smaller proportion of total music licensing cost, but they are independently mandatory.

Enforcement profile
GEMA in particular has a long-established reputation for active enforcement, including in-person inspections. The society publishes its tariff structures transparently but is rigorous in pursuing venues operating outside them. Disputes over tariff interpretation occasionally reach court, particularly where venues argue their music usage is incidental rather than central to commercial operation.

Common pitfalls
Three traps. First — assuming that because Germany has a public broadcasting fee (the Rundfunkbeitrag) that includes some music rights, no further commercial licensing is required. The broadcasting fee does not cover business use of music. Second — assuming that streaming services available in Germany like Spotify or Apple Music can be used commercially under their personal terms. They cannot, the terms prohibit it explicitly, and German enforcement is not lenient on the point. Third — underestimating the cost difference between background and foreground music tariffs, which can be material.

A note on legal context
German law is unusually strong on the rights of authors and performers, reflecting the legal tradition’s emphasis on the moral as well as economic rights of creators. This is one of the reasons GEMA’s fees and enforcement feel more rigorous than equivalent operations elsewhere — the underlying legal framework supports it.

The takeaway: for German commercial venues, both GEMA and GVL licences are necessary, the tariff structures are detailed, and the cost of non-compliance through enforcement action will reliably exceed the cost of proper licensing. Commercial music services that operate in Germany typically handle GEMA and GVL obligations as part of the subscription, removing the administrative burden but not changing the underlying requirement.

FRANCE

AT A GLANCE — FRANCE
Composition society	SACEM
Master society	SPRE (administered via SACEM)
Consolidated licence?	Partial — two rights, single administrative interface
Practical default	SACEM direct, OR commercial music service

France sits between the UK’s clean joint scheme and Germany’s separate two-society model. There are two rights to pay for, but a single administrative interface.

SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) administers publishing rights on behalf of composers, authors and publishers. It has been in operation since 1851 and is one of the most established collecting societies in the world.

SPRE (Société pour la Perception de la Rémunération Équitable) administers what French law calls équitable remuneration — the right of performers and producers to be paid when their recordings are publicly performed. This is the French equivalent of master rights.

Practically, both rights are administered through SACEM. A venue applies to SACEM, declares its activity and characteristics, and receives a single bill covering SACEM’s own fees plus SPRE’s.

The administrative simplification is significant — a venue does not need to deal with two separate organisations — but the two distinct fees underneath are real.

Tariff structure
SACEM’s tariff varies by venue category and characteristics in a similar way to Germany’s GEMA. Background versus foreground music is a key distinction. The number of speakers, the floor area, the audience capacity and the opening hours all feed into the calculation. SACEM publishes tariffs and provides online tools to estimate fees before formal application.

The SPRE portion
SPRE’s fees are typically calculated as a percentage of the SACEM fee, varying by venue category. The principle is that producers and performers receive an équitable (equitable) share of the value created by the public performance of their work.

Enforcement profile
SACEM has historically been one of the more visible enforcement operations in Europe, with field agents who visit venues, listen, identify the music being played, and verify whether the venue is licensed. The French courts have a long tradition of upholding collecting society rights, and the cost of operating without a SACEM licence in France is reliably higher than the cost of obtaining one.

Common pitfalls
First — assuming that because France has reciprocal arrangements with other societies, a UK or German licence carries through. It doesn’t; French public performance requires French licensing. Second — for tourist-heavy venues, assuming that music played for an international audience falls outside French rights. It doesn’t; the rights apply to the public performance in French territory regardless of audience nationality. Third — for hotel chains and multi-site operators, underestimating the per-site licensing cost when scaling across regions.

The takeaway: France’s single-administration model makes licensing more accessible than Germany’s, while the underlying two-rights structure means total fees are typically closer to the German model than to the UK’s. Commercial music services operating in France handle both SACEM and SPRE obligations within the subscription.

AUSTRALIA

AT A GLANCE — AUSTRALIA
Composition society	APRA AMCOS
Master society	PPCA
Consolidated licence?	Yes — OneMusic Australia joint scheme
Practical default	OneMusic Australia direct, OR commercial music service

Australia operates a two-licence model similar to Germany’s, but with a recent move toward administrative consolidation that places the country between the UK and German positions.

APRA AMCOS — formally the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), operating as a single organisation — administers publishing rights on behalf of composers, lyricists and music publishers. It is the dominant Australian collecting society for the publishing side.

PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia) administers master rights — the rights of recording artists and record labels in the public performance of their recordings.

Both licences are required for commercial venues playing recorded music. APRA AMCOS and PPCA have historically operated independently, requiring separate applications and separate payments.

OneMusic Australia
Since 2019, APRA AMCOS and PPCA have offered a joint licensing scheme called OneMusic Australia, modelled in part on the UK’s TheMusicLicence. A venue can apply through OneMusic Australia and receive a single licence covering both rights, with the fees from both societies bundled into one annual payment. This has materially simplified the administrative burden in the Australian market. Venues can still license each society separately if they prefer, but OneMusic Australia is now the standard route for most commercial operators.

Tariff structure
OneMusic Australia publishes tariffs by venue category — restaurants and cafés, bars and nightclubs, fitness centres, retail shops, hotels (with separate considerations for guest accommodation versus public areas), and many other specific business types. Fees scale by venue size, music usage characteristics and audience capacity.

Common pitfalls
First — assuming a New Zealand licence covers Australia. It doesn’t; OneMusic New Zealand is a separate scheme administered by the NZ counterpart societies. Second — for multi-state retail operators, underestimating that licensing applies per location regardless of state. Third — for venues that have moved between formats (a café that becomes a wine bar; a gym that adds a juice counter), failing to update the licence category.

A note on the broader region
The Australian model has influenced licensing schemes elsewhere in Asia-Pacific. New Zealand operates a parallel OneMusic NZ scheme. Singapore, Hong Kong and other regional markets have their own societies with their own structures, broadly resembling the multi-society model but with significant local variation. Operators expanding into Asia-Pacific should treat each market individually.

The takeaway: in Australia, OneMusic Australia is now the practical default for most commercial venues. The model is closer to the UK’s joint scheme than to Germany’s separate-societies approach, but two underlying licences still exist within the consolidated administration. Commercial music services operating in Australia typically handle both APRA AMCOS and PPCA obligations as part of the subscription.

Handle licensing directly, or use a commercial service?

Once the licensing landscape is understood, every venue faces the same practical question. Apply directly to each relevant society in each relevant market and manage the annual administration, or pay a commercial music service that handles all of that as part of a subscription.
Both routes are legitimate. The right choice depends on the venue’s scale, complexity and operational priorities.

Handling licensing directly works well for venues that are single-market, single-site, and small enough that the administrative overhead of one or two annual applications is manageable.

A British café with one location, paying TheMusicLicence annually, has very little to gain by introducing a third-party music service for compliance reasons alone — the licensing is already simple.

The same applies to a small Australian gym using OneMusic Australia, or a French boutique using SACEM. For these operators, the question is more about playlist quality and operational features than about licensing complexity.

Commercial music services come into their own when complexity rises. Multi-location operators, multi-market operators, and operators in markets with multiple separate societies — particularly the US — gain real value from a service that bundles licensing across all the relevant rights and territories into a single subscription.

The administrative simplification is meaningful. So is the reduction in compliance risk: a service that has signed direct agreements with the relevant societies has done the legal work the venue would otherwise have to do itself.

The services worth considering vary by market and by venue type. The names below are not endorsements — they are the operators a venue researching this question is most likely to encounter, presented in alphabetical order.

Commercial Music Services

Cloud Cover
A licensed streaming service for businesses across multiple markets, with a focus on hospitality.

Custom Channels
Curated playlists for retail and hospitality, with bundled licensing in the markets it serves.

Mood Media
One of the longest-established players in commercial music, operating globally across hospitality, retail, gym and corporate environments.

Soundsuit
Algorithmically-curated music with bundled licensing, with a particular footprint in European hospitality.

Soundtrack Your Brand
Operates in approximately 75 countries, bundles both publishing and master rights as part of the subscription, and is purpose-built for multi-zone commercial environments.

Each service has its own coverage map, pricing structure, playlist library and feature set. A venue evaluating options should check that the service holds the necessary licences in every market it operates in, and that the playlist library suits the brand and atmosphere it wants to project. For most multi-zone, multi-market commercial venues, the commercial music service route is now the practical default.

How Optimal Audio fits

A licensed music service solves the rights question. It does not solve the question of how that music actually plays across a multi-zone commercial venue. That is where Optimal Audio fits in.

A modern multi-zone venue has different audio requirements in different spaces. A hotel has a bright morning playlist in the breakfast room, ambient afternoon music in the lobby, more energetic evening music in the bar, gym tracks in the fitness suite, and silence in the corridors. A retail flagship has different music for different floors and different times of day. A restaurant group has different brand identities for different sub-brands within the same building. The licensed music source is the same — the operational requirement is fundamentally different from zone to zone.

Three pieces of technology, working together, turn a licensed music source into a properly-run multi-zone system.

The streaming hardware
WebApp connects natively to two leading streaming hardware options, each of which delivers a licensed music source cleanly into the rack.

Bluesound Professional’s commercial network streamers integrate with Tidal, Deezer, Soundtrack Your Brand and other licensed services. They are designed for the equipment cupboard rather than the home shelf — built for the kind of reliability a commercial venue actually needs, with the network and integration features that make them practical to deploy at scale.

Soundtrack Your Brand’s own streamer range integrates directly with Soundtrack’s licensed music service, bundling the hardware and licensing into a single ecosystem, and ships pre-loaded with a range of content providers and internet radio stations.

Either option pairs with WebApp through Settings → Streamers and is operational within minutes. The choice between them is typically a function of the venue’s preferred music ecosystem rather than any technical limitation.

The zone control
Optimal Audio’s Zone controllers take that streaming source and route it intelligently across the venue. Each zone can be addressed independently — different volume, different EQ, different source if the venue wants to mix licensed background music with live source or paging. The hardware is built around the eco-system approach: Zone, Amp and Up or Cuboid loudspeakers designed to work together by design.

The operator interface
WebApp is the layer that makes the whole system operable by anyone, not just engineers. The bar manager opens WebApp on a tablet or phone, sees only the controls relevant to their zone, and can adjust volume or schedule without needing to understand the broader system. A scheduled music profile can drop the volume automatically at quieter hours and bring it back up for the evening service. Per-zone volume limits prevent staff turning the music up beyond the agreed maximum. All of this is set once by the integrator during commissioning and then runs itself.

A worked example

Consider a hotel with five distinct audio zones: lobby, restaurant, bar, gym and rooftop terrace. The licensed music source is Soundtrack Your Brand, with playlists curated for each zone.

A streamer — either a Bluesound Professional unit or one of Soundtrack’s own streaming devices — delivers that source into the rack. Zone routes the source to each of the five zones with appropriate processing.

WebApp gives the lobby manager control of the lobby, the restaurant manager control of the restaurant, the gym manager control of the gym, and the bar manager control of the bar — each with their own volume range, their own schedule, and no ability to disrupt anyone else’s zone.

The system is licensed, the playlists are appropriate to each space, and the operational complexity is managed by software rather than by the people running the venue. This is what a contemporary multi-zone music system looks like. The licensing question, once handled through a commercial service, becomes the simpler half of the equation. The harder half — running the music well, across spaces and across schedules, by the people who actually operate the venue — is what Optimal Audio’s eco-system is designed for.

To learn more about how the eco-system works in practice, see the Zone and WebApp product pages, or read the Multi-Zone Audio System Design guide for the underlying technical approach. To explore commercial deployment, visit Where to Buy.

Common pitfalls and questions

Do I need a licence if I only play royalty-free music?

Probably not, but check the specifics. “Royalty-free” means the music creator has waived ongoing royalty payments — a one-off payment or licence covers ongoing use. However, “royalty-free” is not the same as “rights-free.” The licence terms still need to permit commercial use in the relevant territory, and some royalty-free libraries restrict the number of locations or the type of business. Read the terms carefully, and if in doubt, contact the library provider directly.

What about radio in my venue — is that covered?

No. The radio station’s broadcast licence covers their right to broadcast the music. It does not extend to your right to publicly play that broadcast in your commercial premises. Whether you tune in via FM, DAB or an online stream, the venue still needs its own public performance licence with the relevant collecting society. The only exceptions are in some markets where very small venues fall under specific exemptions — check locally.

Can I just stream Spotify Premium in my business?

No. Personal subscriptions from Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal personal, Amazon Music personal and other consumer services explicitly prohibit commercial use in their terms of service. Even if the audio quality and the playlist would be perfect, the use is not licensed. For commercial use, you need either a commercial music service (Soundtrack Your Brand and others) or to source music in a way that combines with appropriate public performance licences from the relevant collecting societies.

What counts as “public performance”?

Playing music anywhere your customers, members, guests or staff can hear it, in the context of your commercial operation. This includes background music in a bar, music in a hotel lobby or guest rooms, music in a retail floor, music in a gym, music in a dental waiting room, and music in an office canteen. It does not include music played for genuinely private purposes in non-commercial settings. The legal threshold varies by territory but the principle is consistent: if the music is part of how your business operates, it’s a public performance.

What if my market is not covered in this guide?

The structural principles in section 2 — two rights, collecting societies, public performance — apply almost universally. The specifics vary. Each country has its own collecting societies, and the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) maintains a directory of member societies worldwide, which is a useful starting point for research. Most commercial music services publish their territorial coverage, which tells a venue both where the service holds licences and where additional local licensing might be needed.

At a glance: the five markets

Licensing is real, complex, varies by market, and easy to get wrong. The matrix below summarises the structural position in each of the five markets covered above.

MARKET	COMPOSITION	MASTER	CONSOLIDATED?	PRACTICAL DEFAULT
UK	PRS for Music	PPL	Yes — TheMusicLicence	Direct, or commercial service
US	ASCAP, BMI, SESAC (+ GMR)	Direct label / SoundExchange	No	Commercial service (managing PROs directly is impractical for most venues)
Germany	GEMA	GVL	No	Either route workable; service simplifies admin
France	SACEM	SPRE (via SACEM)	Partial (one admin)	SACEM direct, or commercial service
Australia	APRA AMCOS	PPCA	Yes — OneMusic Australia	OneMusic Australia direct, or commercial service

The cleanest answer for most commercial venues — particularly multi-zone, multi-location or multi-market operators — is to use a commercial music service that bundles licensing across all relevant rights and territories, deployed across the venue in a way that lets the venue’s actual operators run the music well, every day, without needing to think about any of this.

How can we help?

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