For pubs the bill is built from more parts than you might expect, and only one of those parts, the background music itself, depends on whose music you choose. Here is the whole picture, honestly told, with the sources linked so you can check it yourself.
If your pub, bar or wine bar plays commercial music to customers (radio, streaming, CDs or a jukebox), that's a public performance under UK law, and it normally requires TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS. On top of that, and this is the part pubs especially need to know: TVs with the sound up, live music, karaoke and jukeboxes each have their own licensing requirements, separate from your background playlist.
Background music is the one part of the picture where your choice of supplier changes whether the music sits inside the PPL PRS repertoire at all. Everything else stays exactly where it is.
Streaming deserves its own mention, because it is an easy point to miss. A personal Spotify account is not licensed for business use, and holding TheMusicLicence does not change that, since they are two separate things. We go through exactly why in can you legally play Spotify in your venue, and there is a separate case for whether a playlist is doing your room any favours in is a Spotify playlist right for your venue.
TheMusicLicence isn't one flat fee. It's assembled from how your venue uses music. For a pub, the common building blocks are:
Each layer stacks. A music-light local pays in the same few-hundred-a-year territory as a café; a sports pub with a jukebox and a Friday covers band can pay well over a thousand. PPL PRS publish the full tariff tables and revise them each April, so check your venue's numbers at pplprs.co.uk.
Outdoor space is where pub licensing grows its own set of rules, and there are two separate questions behind it that are easy to run together. One is whether your PPL PRS fee covers the garden. The other is whether the Licensing Act lets you play music out there at all. They have different answers, and holding TheMusicLicence does not settle the second one.
Outdoor areas count. PPL PRS are explicit that pubs and bars playing music in outside spaces will usually need TheMusicLicence to do so, and the background music fee is worked out from the square metreage of each area where music is audible. A beer garden with its own speakers is part of that measurement, so it adds to the fee rather than riding along with the room inside. If speakers have gone up on the terrace since your account was last reviewed, that is worth telling them about.
Separately from PPL PRS, playing music to customers can count as regulated entertainment under the Licensing Act 2003. That Act covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own licensing law, and the exemptions below do not apply there, so a pub in either should check with its licensing board or council. In England and Wales, since April 2015 there has been a broad exemption: live and recorded music, between 8am and 11pm, at premises authorised and open for the sale of alcohol, to an audience of no more than 500, is not treated as regulated entertainment. Most pub gardens sit comfortably inside that on a normal afternoon.
The wrinkle is what "the premises" means. The exemption, at paragraph 12A of Schedule 1, attaches to premises licensed for alcohol, which in practice means the area drawn on your premises licence plan. If your garden or terrace is not on that plan, it falls outside the exemption that covers recorded music. A second exemption, at paragraph 12B, covers workplaces that are not licensed under the Act, and licensing specialists generally read a beer garden that is off the plan as falling within it. That one covers live music only. Recorded music was never added to it.
Which produces a result most landlords find backwards: in a garden that sits outside your licensed area, the exemptions treat a band more generously than a speaker. Whether your own outdoor space is on the plan is a question for your premises licence and your licensing authority, and it is worth checking rather than assuming, because plans drawn years ago often stop at the back wall.
Above 500 people, or past 11pm, the exemption stops applying and the music becomes licensable again. The usual routes are a temporary event notice for a one-off, or a variation to the premises licence for something you intend to repeat. Both go through your licensing authority, and a temporary event notice has a notice period, so a bank holiday weekend is not something to arrange on the Thursday.
In practice the constraint to check first is neither of those. It is noise. Music outdoors carries into neighbouring gardens and bedrooms in a way that music indoors does not, and a council can serve an abatement notice under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 where noise from premises amounts to a statutory nuisance. Many premises licences also carry conditions restricting amplified music outdoors, commonly stopping it well before 11pm or requiring the garden to be cleared at a set time. The 11pm in the exemption is a ceiling, not a permission. If a condition on your own licence says 9pm, 9pm is your answer.
The repertoire question travels outdoors unchanged. Music whose writers, publishers, performers and record labels are not members of PRS, PPL or their partner societies abroad sits outside the PPL PRS repertoire in the garden for the same reason it does behind the bar, and the same conversation with PPL PRS settles both at once. Nothing else on this page moves. Your licensed plan, the Licensing Act exemptions, your noise conditions and your neighbours are all exactly where they were, whatever is coming out of the speakers.
The honest conclusion from that table: how much of your music picture your supplier choice touches depends on what kind of venue you run.
Worth repeating because it is easy to miss: royalty-free means you paid a one-off fee to the library that sold you the track. It does not mean the composer is unregistered with PRS: if the composer is a member of PRS or a similar society abroad, a "royalty-free playlist" will normally sit within the PPL PRS repertoire after all. Royalty-free does not by itself mean PRS-free, so it is worth asking your supplier directly. We explain the mechanism in detail in our café licensing guide and on Music licensing.
TheMusicLicence covers music from writers, publishers, performers or record labels who are members of PRS for Music or PPL, or of their partner societies abroad. Music with no such members behind it sits outside that repertoire.
Original, AI-generated music supplied under a commercial licence is one way that happens. PRS for Music's published policy states that works "with no human author or with insufficient human contribution" cannot be registered with PRS. What that means for your own venue depends on everything else you play, which is why PPL PRS are the ones to confirm it rather than a music supplier.
This is how SoundPour is built, and evening rooms are somewhere we have put real effort. Alongside the daytime collections there is an evening range made for exactly these venues: slow-burn R&B for cocktail hour, UK garage for the weekend lift, melodic techno for the late lounge, with The Long Pour carrying the room from the daytime through to The Curated Evening on its own, and nobody behind the bar changing anything. Every track is original, curated by hand in Darlington, registered with no collecting society anywhere, and supplied with a written Declaration of Provenance you can show to PPL PRS. There is more on how it sounds from the first pour to last orders on our page about background music for pubs and bars.
Commercial music played to customers is a public performance and TheMusicLicence normally applies, with TVs, jukeboxes, karaoke and live music treated as separate uses on top. Background music whose writers, publishers, performers and record labels are not members of PRS, PPL or their partner societies abroad sits outside the repertoire. Which of those describes your venue is a question for you and PPL PRS. Our free music licence checker gives you the questions to put to them.
PPL PRS list pubs and bars as one sector, so a bar is usually quoted the same way as a pub. TheMusicLicence normally applies to commercial music played to customers, and a DJ, a jukebox, live music or TV sport with the sound up are each added on top. Background music whose writers, publishers, performers and record labels are not members of PRS, PPL or their partner societies abroad sits outside the repertoire. Which of those describes your bar is a question for you and PPL PRS.
More variable than for any other venue type: a few hundred pounds a year for a music-light local, well over a thousand for a music-led venue with TVs, a jukebox and live events. The fee is assembled from each way you use music. PPL PRS publish the tariffs at pplprs.co.uk, and their own worked examples (background music £364.62, a jukebox £616.24, live music £14.64 per event, all for 2026) are set out in how much is a music licence?
No. Those are treated as separate uses and stay within the PPL PRS repertoire no matter what your background playlist is. Changing your background music affects that one part of the picture only. For wine bars and music-light pubs that part may be most of it; for sports and live-music pubs it is one of several. PPL PRS can tell you how your own account is made up.
TheMusicLicence covers the PPL PRS repertoire, and music with no members of PRS, PPL or their partner societies abroad behind it sits outside it. Most wine bars have no TVs, jukeboxes or live acts, so their music picture is usually simpler than a pub's. Whether that changes your own position is for you and PPL PRS to establish, and we will supply documentation about the music for that conversation.
Two licences are in play. TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS treats an outdoor area as part of your audible square metreage, so a beer garden with speakers adds to the fee. In England and Wales, under the Licensing Act, live and recorded music between 8am and 11pm to an audience of up to 500 is exempt at premises authorised and open for the sale of alcohol, which in practice means the area drawn on your premises licence plan. Whether your garden is on that plan is the thing to check, and your licensing authority can tell you.
Live music has more room than recorded music does, in England and Wales at least, where the Licensing Act 2003 applies. Inside your licensed area the 8am to 11pm exemption for audiences up to 500 covers both. Outside it, the workplace exemption at paragraph 12B of Schedule 1 covers live music only, and recorded music was never added to it. Either way TheMusicLicence still applies to the music itself, and any noise conditions on your premises licence still govern the hour. Your own plan and conditions are a question for your licensing authority.
Two separate questions sit behind it. PPL PRS list live music, open mic nights and karaoke among the uses TheMusicLicence covers in pubs and bars, and explain that an entertainment licence from the local authority does not take the place of a music licence. Under the Licensing Act 2003, in England and Wales, the government's guidance says unamplified live music between 8am and 11pm needs no licence under the Act on any premises, and amplified live music in those hours needs none at premises licensed to sell alcohol for drinking there, while they are open for alcohol sales, for an audience of up to 500. Your own premises licence is a question for your licensing authority.
PPL PRS cover nightclubs on the same sector page as pubs and bars, and say TheMusicLicence covers recorded music in pubs, bars and nightclubs. DJ sets are counted separately: PPL's Specially Featured Entertainment tariff gives discos, dances and DJ sets as examples and charges per event by attendance and length, with any background music charged under its own tariff as well. In England and Wales, the government's Licensing Act guidance says an authorisation, such as a premises licence or a temporary event notice, is always required for entertainment before 8am or after 11pm, unless another exemption in the Act applies. What a club needs for its own nights is a question for PPL PRS and the local licensing authority.
A band, an open mic night or a karaoke session raises the same two questions: what PPL PRS charge for, and whether the Licensing Act treats the performance as regulated entertainment. PPL PRS list all three among the uses TheMusicLicence covers for pubs and bars, and their quote checklist asks how many live events and karaoke sessions you hold each year. If a pub without TheMusicLicence is planning an event with music, PPL PRS say they can arrange a temporary permit to cover it, and an existing licence holder can ask them to add the event to its current licence. Their worked figure for live music is set out in how much is a music licence?
On the licensing side, the government's guidance under section 182 of the Licensing Act 2003, in its September 2026 revision, treats a backing track or drum machine accompanying a singer or band as part of a live performance, and says karaoke will generally be classed as live music. The exemption described above falls away before 8am or after 11pm, for amplified music to more than 500 people or while the premises are not open for alcohol sales, and where a licensing authority adds a condition on a review of the premises licence. General conditions not tied to entertainment, such as those about managing noise nuisance, keep applying. What your own licence says is a question for your licensing authority.
PPL PRS do not list nightclubs as a separate sector, and if you searched for a nightclub "music license", the American spelling, the licence they describe is the same TheMusicLicence. What sets a DJ night apart is how it is charged, and that works the same way in a pub, a bar or a club. PPL's Specially Featured Entertainment tariff gives discos, dances and DJ sets as examples, names nightclubs, pubs and bars, restaurants and cafés, and hotels as the venues it applies to, and works out the fee for each event from the attendance and how long the event runs. Where recordings are also used as background music, the tariff for that use applies as well. So a bar's Saturday DJ and its weekday playlist are charged separately.
On the licensing side, in England and Wales, the exemptions described above stop at 11pm. The section 182 guidance says an authorisation is always required for entertainment before 8am or after 11pm, unless another exemption in the Act applies, and that recorded music is also licensable for an audience of more than 500. It says a DJ who is merely playing tracks would not be classified as live music, and that organisers should check with their licensing authority. Whether your premises licence covers recorded music after 11pm, and until what hour, is written on the licence itself, and your licensing authority can confirm it.
The position above reflects the published guidance of UK government, PRS for Music and PPL, the text of the Licensing Act 2003, and specialist licensing commentary where the Act is read rather than quoted. The original sources are linked here so you can read them yourself.
Related guides: Do you need a licence to play music in a café? and Do you need a music licence for a restaurant?
This guide is general information about UK music licensing and about entertainment licensing and noise in England and Wales, not legal advice, and it does not determine what your venue is required to license or what your premises licence permits. SoundPour is not a law firm. The description reflects the current published positions of UK government, PRS for Music and PPL. Confirm your own position with PPL PRS before making any change to your licensing arrangements. Last reviewed 15 October 2026.
SoundPour is original background music for bars and late rooms, from first pour to last orders, supplied with a written Declaration of Provenance covering your catalogue. Drop us your business name and email and we'll come back to you, usually within 24 hours, with the Documentation Pack included so you can show it to PPL PRS or your accountant first.
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