Playing background music in your business has a number of key benefits. Ranging from helping your customer feel relaxed, boosting their mood, and encouraging them to buy. As well as helping your staff be more productive and engaged with their work.
Creating the perfect atmosphere helps you stand out from your competitors. Playing the right type of background music has a lot to do with that. Get it wrong and play music that’s too loud or fast for the atmosphere you need to create, and your staff will be disengaged and customers are likely to be talking about your business for the wrong reasons.
But get it right, and you encourage people to stay longer, spend their money and talk about you to their friends and family. Recommending your business because of the atmosphere you’ve created.
However, you can’t just plug your radio in and press play. Playing music in your business needs to be done legally. This blog post looks at what a music licence in the UK is. Example costs for different types of businesses, and how you can play tracks without one.
What is a Music Licence?
If you want to legally play commercial music in your business, you need to make sure you have the appropriate license. This is the case regardless of whether you want to play the radio, connect your subscription service, switch on the TV or play CDs.
PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) and PRS (Performing Right Society) represent the interests of the copyright holders, and together, they operate TheMusicLicence. The music licence enables you to legally play copyrighted music in your business with PPL PRS. Distributing the appropriate amounts as royalties to the artists, songwriters, record labels, and performers for the use of their music.
PPL PRS are proactive in ensuring businesses have the correct type of licence to play music and issue hefty fines and sometimes legal proceedings to those who use background tunes without one. Their investigations include attending your premises or telephoning to find out whether you’re playing copyrighted music.
Fines will depend on the size of your premises and the length of time you’ve been playing music illegally. They can range from hundreds to thousands of pounds. So, it isn’t worth the risk of playing commercial music without a music licence.
How Much Does a Music Licence Cost?
The cost of a music licence varies depending on factors like the size of your premises, the nature of your business and the number of people using it. Here are some examples of the different costs:
The Cost of a Music Licence for an Office
The cost is dependent on the square metres of your office and the number of staff you have. It starts at £154.35 inc VAT per year for premises with less than 4 staff, with the cost being around £513.60 inc VAT for an office with 100 staff.
Retail Premises
A music licence for an average-sized shop or other type of retail premises with an audible area of 185.2 sqm is £641.88 inc VAT per annum. The bigger the size of your shop, the higher the cost.
Hair and Beauty Salons
If you’re a hairdresser with less than 10 chairs, the cost to play the radio in your salon is £448.72 inc VAT per annum. Increasing the number of chairs you have will increase the cost.
Bars and Pubs
If you want to play music via your radio in a bar or pub that’s 400 sqm or less, a music licence will cost around £504 inc VAT a year.
Cafes and Restaurants
The cost of a music licence for a cafe or restaurant to play the radio with up to 30 seats and 400 sqm or less is around £618 inc VAT per year. More seats or playing a different type of music is likely to cost more.
What are the Alternatives to a Music Licence?
Playing commercial tracks that are copyrighted isn’t the only legal way of playing background music in your business. A more cost-effective way of creating the perfect atmosphere with an affordable music library is playing royalty-free music through a subscription.
We’re Background Sounds, a specialist royalty-free music provider, passionate about providing high-quality music to businesses without the high price tag of a PPL PRS licence. We provide an alternative music service that can be used in any business, whether you own a shop, cafe or hair salon, enabling you to play music legally without a PRS/PPL Music Licence.
What is Royalty-Free Music?
Also called licence-free music, it’s music that’s not registered with PPL PRS; therefore, you can legally play it without a music licence as long as you have a music subscription with a provider such as Background Sounds.
Whilst the artists we use are not registered with PPL PRS, it doesn’t mean their music can be used for free, but the way they receive payment is different. In most cases, they are paid for the use of their music via a music licensing company.
How Licence-Free Music Works with Background Sounds
Our customers have access to over 50 royalty-free playlists covering over 20 music genres. Each playlist is created using the highest quality royalty-free music from around the world.
With such a wide selection of music, there’s something for all types of businesses, including gyms, cafes, offices, beauty salons, shops and healthcare providers. Our online music player gives you quick and easy access to our playlists, allowing you to stream music using your PC, laptop, mobile or tablet device. We offer a monthly or annual subscription, providing you with flexibility in how you pay.
Easy Set Up
Log in via your device, select a playlist and press play! The playlist will continue until you press pause or swap to a new one. You can even get your staff involved and ask them to pick their favourite playlists.
How Much Can You Save With Royalty-Free Music?
Background Sounds works in a much simpler way than PPL PRS. With one price regardless of the size of your business. You choose between a monthly or annual subscription, with the price being per site. Regardless of the size of your business premises or the number of seats!
On average, we save our customers 50 – 80% compared to the cost of a music licence
Both types of subscription include the following features:
- High-quality music
- New music added monthly
- New playlists added throughout the year
- First-class customer support team
- Confirmation/certificate provided on request
Free Music Trial
Try our music for free before you buy a subscription so you can make sure we’re a good fit and the technology works as you need it to. Our free 7-day trial comes with no obligation to buy; there’s no requirement to add card details to sign up.
Background Sounds is a specialist provider of royalty-free music. Working with small businesses looking to play music without the need to buy a PRS PPL Music Licence.
You can access Background Sounds when you take out a subscription to our music service. Stream playlists via any PC, laptop, mobile or tablet device. You can find out all you need to know on our home page here.
