We get emails from Auckland, Manchester, Toronto and Berlin asking the same question with a different acronym in it. Do I really need a licence to play music in my shop? The answer is yes in every one of those cities, for the same reason, collected by organisations that are practically cousins. Here's the structure once, and then the names, country by country.
Two copyrights, two societies, one performance.
Every recorded song carries two separate copyrights: the musical work (melody and lyrics, owned by the songwriter and publisher) and the sound recording (the specific studio performance, owned by the label and recording artist). Playing that song through speakers in a business is a public performance of both, and public performance is a right the owners control. Since no café can ring every publisher and label for permission, the owners pool their rights into collecting societies, and the societies license venues and pass the money back.
That's the whole model, and it's near-universal because most countries signed the same treaties. What varies is whether the two societies have merged their invoices, what the tariff units are, and, in one big market, whether the recording half is charged at all.
OneMusic, twice.
Australia's songwriter society is APRA AMCOS and its recording society is PPCA. Since 2019 they've licensed businesses jointly as OneMusic Australia: one licence, priced per sector, on seats, members or floor area. We've written up the current Australian rates in a separate piece. New Zealand runs the same arrangement under the same name: APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ license through OneMusic NZ.
TheMusicLicence.
In the UK the two halves are PRS for Music (songs) and PPL (recordings). Since February 2018 they've operated a joint venture, PPL PRS Ltd, which issues a single product called TheMusicLicence. If you run a business in Britain and play music, that's the letter you'll get. The tariff logic mirrors Australia's: sector first, then size, then what's actually being played.
Entandem.
Canada's societies are SOCAN for the songwriters and Re:Sound for the recordings. In July 2019 they launched Entandem, a joint company that lets a business take both licences in one transaction. Tariffs are set or approved by the Copyright Board of Canada rather than by the societies alone, which is why Canadian rate cards read a little differently, but the structure is the familiar one.
The exception, in two ways.
America is where the pattern breaks, and it breaks in the business's favour and against it at the same time. In the business's favour: US copyright law gives sound recordings no general public performance right for ordinary playback in a venue, so there's no PPL or PPCA equivalent sending a second invoice for in-store play. Against it: the songwriter side isn't one society but several, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and GMR, each licensing its own catalogue separately, and a venue playing a broad mix of music typically needs more than one.
There is also a genuine exemption that no other country on this list offers. Section 110(5) of the US Copyright Act lets small establishments play radio and television broadcasts without a licence, subject to size limits, roughly 2,000 square feet for most businesses and 3,750 for bars and restaurants, and equipment limits above that. It covers broadcast only. A streaming account, a playlist or a CD is outside it entirely, which is where most American businesses get caught.
One society per country, and a presumption.
Most of continental Europe has one dominant society per country that either collects both halves or collects the recording half on behalf of a sister body: GEMA in Germany, SACEM in France, SIAE in Italy, SGAE in Spain, Buma/Stemra with Sena in the Netherlands. Germany is worth a specific mention. Under a long-standing legal presumption, the GEMA-Vermutung, music played in public is assumed to be in GEMA's repertoire unless the business can show otherwise. If you're using music that genuinely sits outside the society's catalogue, keep the paperwork that proves it.
The honest bit at the end.
We built R FM around that last sentence. We write the music and we make the recordings, so both copyrights are ours and we license them to you directly, which is why the same flat monthly fee works the same way in Sydney, Auckland, Leeds or Toronto, and why we can document exactly where every track came from when a society asks. If you'd rather play the commercial catalogue, take the licence from whichever of the organisations above covers you, and take it properly. The rule really is the same everywhere. So is the letter.