Website Use

Music cover for Website Use has been developed by OneMusic Australia to enable businesses to use music in the background of their business websites. It is available as an additional option in a number of OneMusic Australia schemes, such as the Clubs, Dining, Fitness, Exercise and Wellbeing, and Retail and Service Providers schemes.

This Rate Setting Guide describes how OneMusic Australia sets the rates under the Website Use scheme. For more information about how OneMusic Australia fixes rates and determines rate structures more generally, please see the Rate Setting Guide - General Background available HERE.

Website Use

The Website Use music cover allows a licensee to communicate to the general public recorded music (being both the musical works and the associated sound recordings of those works) in OneMusic Australia’s repertoire as a background stream on the licensee’s business website.

The use of recordings for website use is subject to stringent restrictions such that the rights are only granted as long as the music:

• does not directly generate revenue as a result of the streamed music;
• comprises at least 10, but no more than 15, PPCA Sound Recordings;
• comprises no more than one PPCA Sound Recording by a particular artist or group;
• does not include infringing copies of PPCA Sound Recordings; and
• is only used on the website in a manner that:
   - is independent of the user’s progress;
   - is not associated with any particular part of the website, including without limitation, the homepage;
   - does not act to synchronise PPCA Sound Recordings with any image or video on the website; and
   - does not allow a user to choose which PPCA Sound Recordings they hear, or the times at which they hear them, or be otherwise able to control the nature and timing of the PPCA Sound Recordings played on the website.

Rate Structure:

The rate structure for the use of Website Use is a fixed amount per business.

Rate:

The rates are based on the existing licence fees for the use of APRA AMCOS music prior to 2019, noting that prior to then PPCA did not have an equivalent rate.

APRA AMCOS developed its Online Mini licence scheme in the 2000s.  That scheme provided for various different uses, for example podcasting, backing tracks, and on-demand streaming.  Each use had three tiers and was priced at $275 for the lowest tier, $550 for the middle tier, and $1,100 for the top tier according to the relevant metric.  For Looped Background Music, the closest type of use to the OneMusic Website Use, the lowest tier permitted up to 10,000 unique users a year, the middle tier up to 80,000 unique users a year, and the top tier over 80,000 unique users a year.  In implementing the Online Mini licence scheme, APRA AMCOS consulted on the rates and tiers with existing users at the time.

Using that benchmark, OneMusic’s Website Use cover was priced, irrespective of unique annual users, at the lowest tier from the Online Mini licence scheme, but then doubled to $550 to account for the additional PPCA rights.