If you want to be able to choose from the largest possible collection of commercially available music to play in your business, then a OneMusic licence provides the easiest and most flexible way to legally ‘publicly perform’ the vast majority of the world’s repertoire of music.
However, OneMusic is not the only way to publicly play music that is protected by copyright. You may instead choose to get the permission you need from each individual copyright owner of that music - for instance, the songwriters and recording artists themselves. This approach can be complicated, for instance it is often the case that each songwriter has to first remove the rights in their music out of OneMusic’s repertoire. More information on how the process works can be found here.
If your business has an arrangement to play music through a commercial ‘background music service’, then that arrangement may already include a ‘public performance’ music licence as part of the package. This might be a OneMusic licence, or the provider has otherwise obtained permission from copyright owners for a specific sub-set of music. Check with your ‘background music supplier’ to confirm.
Of course, not all music is protected by copyright, so not all music needs a licence when it is be played in a public place or business.
You may have heard of ‘royalty-free’ music, which is music that has been specifically created so that users do not need to pay anything more to play that music publicly. It won’t be the latest or greatest musical hits, but it may be the type of cost-effective music solution that best suits the needs of your business.
That said, in our experience, often what is sometimes called ‘royalty-free’ music is not entirely ‘royalty-free’, in that it still requires permission of, and payment to, copyright owners. That is, your business may still need a OneMusic licence even though you are only playing what has been incorrectly called ‘royalty-free’. If you are not sure if the music you want to use requires a OneMusic licence, please feel free to contact us. For more information about music often referred to as ‘royalty-free’ – please see here.
