Music licensing in the United Kingdom
Streaming music in your business isn't the same as listening to music at home. When you play music for an audience with a business and commercial purpose, you need different licenses.
Play it right
Soundtrack is built to bring you music that’s legal for your business. In most cases, everything you need is included in your plan. If you charge admission fees, play live music or timing music to exercise classes you may need additional permissions.
Recording rights
Allows you to stream a specific sound recording of a song
Publishing rights
Allows you to stream the original composition
Change the way you play
Soundtrack offers an excellent selection of music because of our direct relationships with publishers, performing rights organizations and record labels. These include Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and more. Our technology accurately tracks your song plays, which ensures that music creators get the right payments from us. Soundtrack Unlimited makes royalty payments about 5 times higher than streaming services for private use.
Music for business
Avoid legal concerns when playing music in your business. Use a suitable music provider (like Soundtrack) and check that you have the correct licenses in place.
Personal music services including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer, are not approved for use in business environments.
Spotify
You can’t broadcast or play Spotify publicly from a business, such as bars, restaurants, schools, stores, salons, dance studios, radio stations, etc. To play in a commercial environment, check out our friends at Soundtrack.
Spotify for public or commercial useYouTube
You may access and use the Service as made available to you, as long as you comply with this Agreement and the law. You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use.
YouTube Terms of ServiceDeezer
The use of the Site and Application is only authorized for a personal and private use, therefore any other use, notably in public premises and businesses, is strictly forbidden.
Terms of Use for the Deezer Free ServiceApple
You may use the Services and Content only for personal, noncommercial purposes (except as set forth in the App Store Content section below or as otherwise specified by Apple).
Apple Media Services Terms and ConditionsAmazon Music
You may use the Services only for your personal, non-commercial purposes.
Amazon Music Terms of UseGet licensed
Get your correct business licenses
If you don't have a public performance license from TheMusicLicence, please visit their website.
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Music licensing in the United Kingdom
Playing music for your own personal use isn't quite the same as playing it in your business. In the United Kingdom, a business can only play music on-site if it acquires proper licensing in advance from PPL and PRS for Music. Although there is a wide variety of licenses available depending on your business type, the good news is they're all available from the same website: TheMusicLicence. PRS for Music is a copyright collective that dates back to 1914, when it was founded as the Performing Right Society for the purpose of protecting the performance rights of composers, publishers and songwriters. The collective also includes MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society), which focuses on the mechanical rights of the same industry professionals. PRS for Music distributes royalties to its' members whenever licensed music is played in the UK. The other major player in the UK's music licensing space is Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). Established in 1934 by two record labels (Decca Records and EMI), PPL collectively manages rights on behalf of record labels in the United Kingdom and also distributes the royalties collected. How does a business in the United Kingdom go about sorting out their music licensing needs? PRS for Music and PPL teamed up to create TheMusicLicence to ensure the UK has a single platform for getting licenses. Just fill in a brief form with some details about your business (including the venue type and number of employees) and an advisor from TheMusicLicence will get back to you with a tariff quote within 24 hours.
Contact info
TheMusicLicence
PPL
PRS for Music