Music licence within salon reception?

[angelicpracticemanager]

Hi there, I am a practice manager in London (offering waxing & facials) - recently we have been made aware of a company by the name of PPL (www.pplprs.co.uk) who businesses must use to purchase a licence to play music. I contacted them and they quoted us £440 (annually) to play music in a 20sqm reception.

I have done some reading and apparently these are the ONLY people that do this. So essentially we DO NOT have a choice.

Spotify offer some kind of business playlist, however this is to be paid in ADDITION to the payment to PPL.

What are other business owners / managers doing with regards to playing music??

Thank you in advance!

 

[user 111574]

I have a home based salon and I purchase music from iChill which is licence free.
They have loads of different music to suit a wide range of businesses. I pay per CD / album, download to my computer and then create playlists for different treatments onto an iphone. I then play the music through speakers.

https://www.ichillmusic.com/

 

[AcidPerm]

https://www.salongeek.com/threads/ppl-and-prs-music-licence.315600/#post-2610979

Yes, you have to purchase a license to play music in a public place (salon business) unless you only purchase licence free music such as ichill.

 

[angelicpracticemanager]

https://www.salongeek.com/threads/ppl-and-prs-music-licence.315600/#post-2610979

Yes, you have to purchase a license to play music in a public place (salon business) unless you only purchase licence free music such as ichill.

... thank you ... there are no alternatives to a (paid) license other than PPL?

 

[TheDuchess]

It's like a TV license. There's no alternative to the Regulatory Body. You either pay the licence fee to get legal, or you research and play licence free music. You have to be very careful to make sure that you never play copyright music as you can get fined. We have an inspector come into our salon unannounced and just stand quietly "browsing" listening to our music before asking us what music we play. You also have to make sure that staff don't play their own music unless wearing headphones. And the hold music on your phone needs to be licensed too.

When I started I made the decision not to play popular, instantly recognisable musical, but to find something a bit different. I hate pan pipes and "whale music" but I discovered Thai music which sounds lovely and has birdsong and other natural sounds like running water added into lovely classical sounding orchestral music. It's sold as licence free.

There is a search facility online where you can look up artists and check whether the music is copyright. If you decide to go down this route be thorough, the composer, the musicians and the recording studio/distributor are all entitled to royalties for their work. You need to make sure that none of these have an agreement to collect royalties through PPL. It's hard work so not really worth it to be honest.

 

[salonsaviour]

Indeed - you will need to purchase this license if you want to play music legally in your salon. I believe they used to be two separate licenses that have recently been combined to make it more straightforward. As TheDuchess states - it is like a TV license that needs to be purchased on an annual basis. You can, however, set it against your taxes