Most café owners do the obvious thing: open Spotify, Apple Music or a YouTube playlist on a phone behind the counter and let it run. It feels harmless. In most countries, though, a personal streaming subscription only licenses music for personal listening — not for playing to customers. Playing music in a business is a “public performance,” and that’s a separate right.
Why your personal Spotify isn’t enough
Songwriters and publishers are paid for public performances through performing-rights organizations — ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in the United States; PRS and PPL in the UK; SACEM, GEMA and others elsewhere. A consumer streaming plan doesn’t cover those performance royalties, and its terms usually prohibit commercial use outright. Enforcement is real: PROs do contact venues, and the licences — or the fines — aren’t trivial for a small shop.
Your three legal options
- A business music service. Services built for venues (Soundtrack Your Brand, Cloud Cover and similar) bundle the public-performance licences into the subscription. Simplest, but a recurring cost per location.
- Licence directly. Pay your local PROs for a public-performance licence and play from any source. Thorough, but it’s paperwork and usually more than one licence.
- Play music you actually control. Your own recordings, royalty-free or production-music libraries, or AI-generated tracks you own. If the music isn’t in a PRO’s repertoire, there are no per-play performance royalties to collect.
The simplest route for a small café
For an independent shop, the third option is usually the cheapest and least stressful: build a library of music you own outright and just play it. Royalty-free libraries sell tracks licensed for commercial and public use — confirm the licence explicitly allows in-store play (most do). And music you generate yourself with AI is yours to play, with no third-party rights attached.
Kanjo Music Player is built for exactly this: upload your own MP3s and play them on your opening hours, ad-free. If you don’t have a library yet, you can generate your own royalty-free tracks with AI in an afternoon. (It won’t licence commercial chart music for you — that’s what the business services and PRO licences above are for.)
One caveat
Music law varies by country and even by venue type, and this isn’t legal advice. If you want to play popular commercial music, check your local performing-rights organization and licence it properly. If you’re happy with music you own or that’s royalty-free, you can sidestep the whole question — and the room still sounds like you.