The truth uncovered: Playing music in your business environment is too expensive

Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 4:40 pm by DigitalSignageBlog, 3 Comments »

I just finished reading an article from TechDirt and was shocked to find out how much the yearly licensing fees are for playing music in a nightclub or a restaurant. Here is a short extract from the article:

“It wants to increase licensing fees in a 120-seat restaurant to $19,344 a year — up from $125. Small cafes would be slugged with a 4729 per cent yearly increase from $124 to $5860.”

Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090615/0329305236.shtml

For those digital signage businesses who provide their clients with a digital signage solution that plays music in the background, have you considered what legal implications are involved and what the licensing requirements are? Even if your client has paid for the music clips or videos!

In Australia, retail stores that play music – whether from the radio, purchased CDs, computers, digital signage are required to pay a licensing fee otherwise it may be considered breaching copyright laws and eventually be fined thousands of dollars.

Now we all know that music can set the mood and atmosphere in your store, nightclub, restaurant or cafe but did you know that you may have to pay a licensing fee for playing music in your business environment or anywhere in public areas? Basically, if you play music in your store you need to have a PPCA public performance license to play protected sound recordings and an APRA public performance license to play musical and literary works. For more information about this visit https://transactions.business.gov.au/BLIS/musiclicence.aspx

All I can say is, just make sure that if you’re running a business or if you’re installing a digital signage solution with audio for one of your clients make sure you mention these licencing requirements to your client otherwise they (or possibly your business) may end up paying a hefty fine – so don’t risk it.

After thinking about this situation, do you believe a license is required for playing videos of unsigned artists playing original songs from Youtube in your store or business environment?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that because these artists are unsigned (i.e don’t have a label) the PPCA, or APRA won’t be paying them one cent so why should you pay for the license fee if all you’re playing is songs from these unsigned artists. For example, here’s one of my favourite Youtube R&B groups called LEGACI playing an original song. Keep it up boys.

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Tags: australia, Blis, Business Environment, Business Environments, Cafes, Cds Computers, Copyright Laws, digital signage, Exact Figures, Legal Implications, Licence Costs, Licencing Requirements, Licensing Fee, Licensing Requirements, Music Background, Music Business, Music Cds, music clips, Music Radio, Music Retail, Music Videos, Performance License, Play Music, Playing Music, Public Areas, Public Performance, Retail Environment, retail stores, Running A Business, Seat Restaurant, Shtml, Signage Solution, Sound Recordings, Techdirt, Thousands Of Dollars, Truth, Unsigned Artists, Youtube

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3 Responses to “The truth uncovered: Playing music in your business environment is too expensive”

Russ Curry
June 20th, 2009 at 8:35 pm

I assume that you’re not disputing the fact that music should be paid for?

And surely you are not suggesting that musicians who are not signed to a label shouldn’t be paid at all..???

I don’t know how it works in Australia but in Europe artists can join collecting societies without passing via a label and can therefore benefit from ‘neighbouring rights’ – i.e. the use of music other than directly from record sales.
You might suggest to Legaci that they check out the rights situation and take whatever action they need to in order to be able to earn a living from their creative endeavours.
DigitalSignageBlog
June 20th, 2009 at 10:54 pm

Music should be definitely paid for and I’m not suggesting that musicians who are not be paid. My post was more relating to the licensing fee and requirements – just advising businesses to do the “right thing”.
Thanks for your comments and for participating in the discussion. I always love to hear what other people think.
Russ Curry
June 21st, 2009 at 3:58 am

Thanks – you reassure me!
I’m all for keeping costs down, but I’m with you about ‘doing the right thing’.
All of what our company does (selling video content for DOOH – including music videos) is based on exploitation of creative works and we are very careful to make sure that all rights owners get paid. We’ve heard stories of one competitor who’s been sailing a bit too close to the wind a couple of times and of course they got caught out and caused themselves and their clients great embarrasment. Which is not good, but worse, it was the the end-user customer ( a retail chain) that got sued first and thats really not good for our industry. We all work hard to develop our businesses so anything that goes against this is to be strongly discouraged.
You do well to explain the issues around music rights to your readers – its true that there are many misunderstandings around – so keep up the good work!