If your venue's music runs off a phone with a personal Spotify account signed in, it is easy to assume that paying a music licence makes it fine. There is a gap in that thinking, and it is worth understanding properly. Here is the whole picture in plain English, with the sources so you can check it yourself.
A personal Spotify account is not meant for playing to customers. Spotify's own terms restrict it to personal, non-commercial use, and paying for a music licence from PPL PRS does not change that. The two are separate things, and a venue can have the licence and still be using the account against its terms. The rest of this guide explains why, because the reason is the part that is easy to miss.
Having TheMusicLicence does not make a personal Spotify account allowed in your venue. They cover two different things.
Not from Spotify itself. Spotify's own support page says, in its words, that "Spotify is only for personal, non-commercial use", and it lists bars, restaurants, stores and salons among the places you cannot play it. It does not describe a business version of its own app. Instead it points businesses to a separate commercial music service, run by another company, with its own subscription and its own terms (Spotify's own guidance).
Two things follow for a UK venue. Upgrading to Premium does not help: it removes the adverts, not the personal-use restriction. And a commercial service answers only one of the two questions below, the terms of the thing you play the music from. Whether TheMusicLicence is included in its price, or still needed alongside it, is worth asking any such service directly before you sign up.
The common assumption goes like this: the music on Spotify is the same music the radio plays, that music is covered by the licence I pay to PPL PRS, so I am paying for it and I can play it however I like. The first two parts are broadly right. The conclusion is where it goes wrong, because it treats one permission as if it covers everything. In fact there are two separate permissions, and you need both.
Playing recorded music to customers in the UK involves two different kinds of permission, and they come from two different places.
Layer one, the public performance. When songs are played in public, the people who wrote and recorded them are owed royalties. In the UK that is handled by TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS, which covers their combined repertoire, essentially the music you would recognise from the radio or a streaming service. This is the layer that is easiest to see, because it is the bill that arrives.
Layer two, the terms of the thing you play it from. The device or service you actually play the music through has its own rules. A CD, a commercial music service and a personal streaming account each come with different terms about where they may be used. A personal Spotify account's terms say personal, non-commercial use only. That is a private agreement between you and Spotify, and no performance licence touches it.
Both layers have to be satisfied. TheMusicLicence looks after layer one for the repertoire it covers. It does nothing at all for layer two. So a venue that pays PPL PRS in full, and genuinely has its public performance sorted, can still be breaching Spotify's terms simply by using a personal account to do the playing. The licence and the account are answering two different questions.
This is not our interpretation. It is Spotify's own published position. Their guidance states, in their words, that Spotify is only for personal, non-commercial use, and that "you can't broadcast or play Spotify publicly from a business, such as bars, restaurants, schools, stores, salons, dance studios, radio stations". Upgrading to Premium removes the adverts but does not change what the account may be used for, and Spotify directs businesses that want to play music to a separate commercial service (Spotify's own guidance).
The same personal-use restriction applies to the other consumer apps people reach for, such as Apple Music and Amazon Music. They are built and licensed for one person listening, not for a room full of paying customers.
Two things, and neither is the dramatic per-song fine you may have read about online. Those eye-watering figures come from United States copyright law and have nothing to do with a UK cafe.
First, using a personal account commercially breaches Spotify's terms, and Spotify can suspend or close the account. In practice that means the music can simply stop one day, with no warning. Second, and separately, playing music in public without the licence it requires is copyright infringement, which PPL PRS can pursue for the unpaid fees and costs. How any of that would apply depends entirely on the specifics of your venue and what you play, and PPL PRS are the people who determine that, not a website.
The honest takeaway is not that anyone is about to fine you. It is that a personal streaming account is simply the wrong tool for the job, it can be switched off under you at any time, and it leaves you with a loose end you do not need.
Once you can see the two layers, staying clear is straightforward. You want a music source whose own terms allow you to play it to customers, and you want your public performance position settled for whatever you play. A proper commercial music service handles the first. What you need for the second depends on the music itself.
This is where SoundPour is built differently. It is original music, supplied under a commercial licence for use in venues, and it is not registered with PRS for Music, PPL or any other collecting society. It comes with a written Declaration of Provenance covering the catalogue, so you have a record of exactly where it came from. What that means for your own venue is still a question for you and PPL PRS, and the documentation exists precisely so you can put it to them with documentation rather than guesswork. It is a music source made to be played in public, not a personal account being used in a way it was never meant for. There is more on how it sounds in cafés, in pubs and bars, and in restaurants.
If you would like to hear it, you can try the player yourself in a couple of minutes, or start a free 60-day beta and run it in your own venue. For why the right music matters in the first place, quite apart from staying on the right side of the rules, see is a Spotify playlist right for your venue. And for the full picture on the licensing side, our music licensing guide and quick licence checker go through it in plain English.
Spotify's own terms say the service is for personal, non-commercial use, and Spotify states that you cannot play it publicly in a business such as a bar, restaurant, shop or salon. That applies on the free tier and on Premium. To play music to customers, Spotify itself directs businesses to a separate commercial service. Playing music in public also brings in UK performance licensing, which is a separate matter, and PPL PRS are the people who can confirm your position on that.
No, these are two separate things. TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS covers the public performance of songs, meaning the royalties owed to writers, publishers, performers or record labels who are members of PRS for Music or PPL, or of their partner societies abroad. Spotify's consumer terms are a separate contract that restricts the account to personal, non-commercial use, and holding a performance licence does not change what that account is permitted to do. A venue can be fully paid up with PPL PRS and still be using a personal Spotify account against its terms.
There are two separate issues. Using a personal account commercially breaches Spotify's terms, and Spotify can suspend or close the account. Separately, playing music in public without the licence it requires is copyright infringement, which PPL PRS can pursue for unpaid fees and costs. The specifics depend entirely on the venue, and PPL PRS are the people who determine that, not a web page.
No. Spotify's terms give users permission for "personal, non-commercial use", on the free tier and on Premium alike. PPL PRS's own guidance on streaming says platforms such as Spotify "are for personal use only", that a business wanting to play music through a streaming platform "will require a commercial streaming service", and that even then "the chances are you'll need TheMusicLicence". A Spotify subscription and a music licence (often searched for as a "music license", the American spelling) are separate things, and paying for one does not settle the other. What TheMusicLicence costs is set out in our guide to how much a music licence costs, and PPL PRS are the people who can confirm whether your venue needs one.
As with music played to customers, there are two separate layers. On the Spotify side, its terms allow "personal, non-commercial use", and PPL PRS's page for offices and workplaces asks businesses to check that the terms of platforms such as Spotify allow commercial use before playing them. On the licensing side, PPL PRS say that music played outside a domestic environment "is classed as a public performance" even if only employees can hear it, and that a business playing music just for its staff will usually need TheMusicLicence. PPL PRS's help page also describes a discretionary policy of not charging people working on their own from home, or workplaces with only one worker, where the music is not made available to visitors or customers. That policy concerns the PPL PRS charge, not Spotify's terms, and whether any of it applies to your workplace is for PPL PRS to confirm.
Not in the sense of a business version of Spotify. Spotify's terms do allow an account to be set up on behalf of a company or brand, and say a brand "may follow users and create and share playlists". That part of the terms says nothing about playing music to customers. It does say that "you" and "your", as used throughout the terms, "apply to both you and the Brand", and the permission those terms give is for "personal, non-commercial use". Spotify's guidance on public and commercial use makes no exception for these accounts, and still points businesses that want to play music in a commercial environment to a separate commercial service.
SoundPour is original background music, licensed for commercial use and supplied with a written record of where it came from. No personal account, no adverts, nothing to switch off under you. Start a free 60-day beta and we will set up a private player for your venue, usually within 24 hours.
Start your free betaor email us directly: hello@soundpour.co.uk