Music on business premises tends to be a subject that only comes up when somebody asks about it directly. It is worth understanding it earlier and calmly, because the mechanism behind it is simpler than it looks. This article explains who collects remuneration for playing music, on whose behalf, and where that whole system came from.
We will start with a distinction that puts everything else in order. Listening to music at home or in the car is one thing; switching it on where customers, guests or patients can hear it is quite another. The second case is called public performance, and it usually goes together with remuneration for the people who created the music.
There is nothing surprising about that. The author of a recording, much like your coffee supplier, expects to be paid for the fact that their work is working in your premises. The only question is who collects that money and on whose behalf.
- The place matters, not the equipment - the line is drawn by who can hear the music, not by the device it comes out of.
- A collective management organisation represents its members and the works that have been registered with it.
- The system came about for the convenience of both sides - a composer simply cannot settle separately with thousands of venues.
- Radio and a streaming playlist are no exception, because what counts is the place of performance, not the source of the sound.
- There is also a repertoire these payments do not cover - we write about it in the closing section.
Private listening and playing music where customers are
The line does not run along the equipment or the volume, but along who can hear the music. The same phone, the same playlist and the same song are two completely different situations: once you are listening in your own kitchen, once you are playing it through a speaker above a counter with a queue of customers.
In the first case the music is yours and concerns nobody else. In the second it becomes part of the service: it builds an impression, keeps a guest at the table, fills the silence in a waiting room. That is what is called public performance, and that is what comes with remuneration for the people who created the music.
One thing is worth stating straight away: this is not a penalty for running a business. It is remuneration for using somebody else's work professionally, exactly as when you pay for a booking system or for the software running your till.
Why collective management organisations came into being at all
Picture a composer whose recording is playing in several thousand cafes across the country. If they had to settle with each one separately, they would need several thousand agreements, documents and deadlines to keep track of. Instead of writing music, they would be running an office.
On the other side stands the owner of a cafe in which a hundred pieces by a hundred different creators play over the course of a single day. If she had to contact each of them separately, she would never have opened the place at all.
Collective management grew out of that simple arithmetic. A creator entrusts an organisation with the care of their works, and the organisation concludes agreements with users and distributes what it collects among those it represents. One agreement instead of a thousand, on both sides. In Poland the best known bodies are ZAiKS, which deals with the copyright of authors, and STOART, which represents performing artists. Both operate in accordance with the law and do precisely what they were set up to do.
Who the organisation represents
This question is the key to understanding the whole subject. A collective management organisation acts on behalf of the creators who have joined it and have registered their works with it. It does not manage all the music in the world, only the repertoire that has been entrusted to it.
From a practical point of view this means that the scope of the payments is set by a specific repertoire, and not by the mere fact that something is playing in your premises.
Who this concerns in practice
The list is broader than most people assume. It is enough that the music can be heard by somebody who comes in as a customer or a guest.
- Hospitality - a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, a pizzeria, and the terrace or garden too.
- Retail - a shop, a showroom, a market stand, a collection point for orders.
- Services - a hairdressing and beauty salon, a workshop, a car wash, a gym.
- Health and beauty - a waiting room, a treatment room, a spa and wellness area.
- Accommodation - reception, the lobby, the breakfast room, the corridors.
- Events - a conference, a reception, a company party, a trade fair.
We wrote about how music actually works in each of those places in our article on choosing background music for a cafe, a hotel and a restaurant. That piece covers the practical side; this one covers the formal.
Radio and streaming are no exception here
This is the most common misunderstanding. Many people assume that since radio is received perfectly legally and the subscription to a streaming service has been paid, the matter is closed.
What decides, though, is the place in which the music is played, not the source it arrives from. A radio in a home kitchen and a radio in a dining room are two different situations, even with the same receiver. It is much the same with streaming: the standard offer is designed for a private user and usually does not cover playing music where customers are listening.
The most common source of confusion is a member of staff using their private account. Somebody plugs a phone into the speaker because it was quickest, and a month later nobody remembers what the place is actually playing from. Settle it once and write it into the staff instructions. Five minutes of work, a great many questions saved.
What is worth having in order
Whichever route you choose, a handful of things are simply worth knowing and worth having written down.
- What is playing in the premises - a specific source, rather than a vague "something from the internet".
- Who switches it on - one person responsible, instead of every shift doing it its own way.
- Where that music comes from - and what the paperwork says about what it allows.
- Where it can be heard - the room, the back office, the terrace, the corridor; speakers carry further than people expect.
- Who needs to know all this - a new member of staff on day one, not three months in.
This is not a list prepared with an inspection in mind. It is ordinary housekeeping that stops the subject coming back every few months. If you are looking for other things worth settling before ordering anything, have a look at our help section.
The repertoire these payments do not cover
To finish, something worth knowing as you enter this subject. Alongside the music entrusted to collective management organisations there is a repertoire created by people who belong to no such organisation and have not registered their recordings with one. There is then no body that would collect remuneration for playing them. That is what the music we release on CD discs is built on: we hold full rights to it, and the venue receives a carrier that sits by the player and simply plays. The disc can carry the venue's own mark as well, because CD printing is done digitally, in offset or by screen print.
We take apart how exactly that works in a separate article. If you would like to talk about what specifically might be playing in your own place, write to us through the contact form. For hospitality venues a carrier lying next to the player is often more convenient than anything that needs a permanent internet connection.
Music royalties in a business do not come out of nowhere and are not aimed at anybody. They are how creators are paid for work that works for you every day from opening to closing. Understanding the mechanism takes a quarter of an hour, and it lets you decide consciously instead of putting it off until somebody asks. On which repertoire suits which interior in the first place, we wrote in our piece on genres that support the prestige of a brand.
