Music licences for fitness, exercise & wellbeing

If you are playing music protected by copyright, it is highly likely you need a music licence, or some other form of permission by the copyright holders of that music. Permission to play music protected by copyright is a legal requirement in a business/commercial setting.

You can get permission by purchasing a blanket licence from OneMusic, giving you legal access to the majority of popular music worldwide.

Alternatively, you can:

•  Ask the music creators for permission for each piece of music you play and pay them directly, one by one.
• Only play royalty-free music. It's often difficult to determine what music really is royalty free. It's not the safest option, and it's very limiting with what music you can play.

If you run a gym, a yoga, barre or Pilates studio, if you run training sessions (either indoors or outdoors like cross-fit), or you run functional fitness, HIIT, Les Mills, Zumba, circuit, CrossFit, martial arts, boxing or aquatic fitness classes or you run boot camps (and so on), and you use music protected by copyright - a OneMusic licence allows you do so legally.

No - subscribing to a streaming service (paid or free) or even just turning on the radio doesn’t automatically give you the legal right to play that music in your business. 

Firstly, the most popular streaming services that most of us use every day are only for our personal use (take a look at your music streaming service’s Terms of Use to see this in play). 

More importantly, to play music that is protected by copyright ‘in public’ (that is, in your business), you need to get permission from the owners of that music copyright. 

When your business has a OneMusic licence, you have the right to play the vast majority of popular and well-recognised music from around the world.

Music has value – it motivates a workout, adds fun, and helps with perseverance.

‘Royalties’ are what is paid to music creators when their copyright-protected music is used, particularly by other people. For instance, by radio stations, on TV or when played ‘in public’ by a business. 

OneMusic keeps track of the music being played in a huge database that has been collected from music users across Australia, including from radio stations, TV broadcasts, music streaming services and live performances. 

OneMusic then pays APRA AMCOS and PPCA the licence fees it collects so that they can pay ‘royalties’ to help music creators continue their work.

What happens if I don't take out a music licence? Playing music that is protected by copyright in a business without permission may be an infringement of copyright, which may lead to legal action and significant costs.

A court proceeding can result in your business having to pay, not only the licence fees that would have applied, but additional costs such as ‘damages’ and legal fees.

No - OneMusic is a genuine music licensing organisation that has issued hundreds of thousands of ‘public performance’ music licences to businesses, individuals and organisations throughout Australia since 2019.

You can easily confirm OneMusic’s legitimacy by checking with various official websites, such as The Australian Business Licence and Information Service and the Australian Copyright Council.

The performing right organisations behind OneMusic have been licensing the use of music for almost 100 years. Launched in 2019, OneMusic is a joint initiative of APRA AMCOS and PPCA. In an effort to simplify the licensing process for customers, they created one licence to cover music use by songwriters, publishers, recording artists, record labels and composers.