Background Music

Why That Spotify Playlist Might Cost You Everything

There's a Vietnamese sandwich shop in Queens where the owner plays nothing but Coltrane. Not because he's trying to be cool, not because some consultant told him jazz tested well with his demographic. He plays Coltrane because when he was learning English, working double shifts at a catering company in Manhattan, someone gave him a tape of "A Love Supreme" and told him this was America. The music meant something. It means something.

But here's what that shop owner didn't know for his first three years in business: he was breaking federal law every single day. And it could have cost him everything he'd built.

Most operators think music is just... there. Background. Ambiance. You've got a smartphone, you've got Spotify Premium, you hit play on your "Coffee Shop Vibes" playlist and consider the problem solved. You are, in the eyes of the law, a thief. Not a casual one, either. You're committing copyright infringement, and the organizations that enforce these rights have investigators whose entire job is walking into places exactly like yours, listening, documenting, and preparing legal action.

Let me make this abundantly clear: playing music in your commercial establishment is not covered by your personal streaming subscription. Not Spotify. Not Apple Music. Not YouTube. Not that playlist your manager made because they've "got great taste." Every one of those services explicitly forbids commercial use in their terms of service. When you play music in your business—when you use it to enhance your customers' experience, to set a mood, to keep your staff from losing their minds during the dinner rush—you are publicly performing copyrighted material. And that requires licensing.

The legal framework here isn't new or ambiguous. In the United States, performance rights are controlled primarily by three organizations: ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. These are performing rights organizations—PROs—and they represent songwriters, composers, and publishers. When you play a song in your restaurant, food truck, café, or smoothie shop, you owe royalties to the people who created that music. The PROs exist to collect those royalties and distribute them to their members.

If you're thinking you can fly under the radar, understand this: these organizations employ people who do nothing but visit businesses and document unlicensed music use. They're not aggressive about it initially—they'll typically send a letter offering you the opportunity to get licensed. But if you ignore that letter, the penalties escalate quickly. Copyright infringement damages can range from $750 to $30,000 per song, per incident. If the infringement is deemed willful, that number jumps to $150,000 per song.

I know an operator in Portland who got hit with a lawsuit over his Saturday brunch playlist. Eighteen documented songs over three visits. The settlement was north of forty thousand dollars. The business didn't survive it. He thought he was creating atmosphere. The law saw systematic copyright violation.

So what do you do? You can try to license directly with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC individually. Each has fee structures based on your square footage, seating capacity, and whether you're playing recorded music or hosting live performances. For a small fast casual spot, you're looking at somewhere between $300 and $1,000 per year, per PRO. The paperwork is manageable if tedious. But here's the catch: you need licenses from all of them to be fully covered, because you rarely know which PRO represents which song. That Kendrick Lamar track? Different publishing for different albums. That Taylor Swift song? Her catalog is a legal labyrinth.

Direct licensing makes sense if you're only playing carefully curated music from known sources and you've got administrative bandwidth to manage multiple agreements. For most operators, this is like choosing to build your own POS system from scratch when perfectly good solutions exist.

The modern answer is commercial music services designed specifically for business use. These services maintain blanket licenses with all the major PROs, removing your legal liability while providing you with curated, controllable content. They're not cheap compared to consumer streaming, but they're absurdly cheap compared to a copyright lawsuit.

Muzak pioneered this space—the original provider of licensed background music for businesses. For decades, if you walked into an elevator or a department store, you were hearing Muzak's instrumentals and carefully sanitized versions of popular songs. The company understood something fundamental: businesses needed music, but they needed it without legal risk or offensive content. Muzak eventually evolved and was absorbed into Mood Media, which still serves this market but has moved far beyond elevator jazz.

Today's landscape offers significantly better options. Rockbot has emerged as one of the more interesting solutions, particularly for fast casual operations. Their model is clever: they provide the music service and the hardware, and they're fully licensed with ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR (the fourth major PRO that many operators forget about). But here's what makes them relevant to modern operations—they offer customer interaction. Your guests can influence the playlist through an app, within parameters you set. You maintain control over genre and appropriateness, but you give your regulars a sense of ownership over the environment. I've seen this work beautifully in brewery taprooms and coffee shops where the customer base skews younger and engaged.

Pandora for Business (formerly Pandora Cloud Cover) took the consumer product everyone already knew and made it legal for commercial use. The interface is familiar, the music discovery is solid, and the licensing is comprehensive. You're paying anywhere from $25 to $50 per month depending on your subscription level. The catalog is massive, the curation is algorithmic but generally smart, and you can set it and mostly forget it. For operators who don't want to think deeply about music strategy, this is your floor—the minimum viable solution that keeps you legal and doesn't require a learning curve.

Then there's Soundtrack Your Brand, which approaches the problem from a different angle entirely. These are the folks who actually understand that music is branding, not just background noise. Their service is fully licensed globally—ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR, and their international equivalents. But more importantly, they think about music the way a good operator thinks about menu development: strategically, with purpose, with attention to what you're trying to communicate.

Soundtrack Your Brand lets you schedule different playlists for different dayparts. Your breakfast service doesn't sound like your dinner service. Your Monday afternoon doesn't sound like your Saturday night. They offer both curated playlists designed by actual music professionals and the ability to build your own from their licensed catalog. The interface is restaurant-grade—stable, simple, designed to work on the hardware you probably already have. Pricing runs $25 to $35 per location per month, which is less than you're spending on your illegal Spotify account when you factor in the actual legal risk.

Here's what matters about all of these solutions: they remove uncertainty. You're not wondering if that song is covered. You're not keeping track of three different PRO licenses and renewal dates. You're not vulnerable to the investigator who walks in during your rush and hears you playing your personal Apple Music through the house speakers.

But let's talk about what these services can't do: they can't tell you what your restaurant should sound like. That's on you. The wrong music can destroy everything else you're building. I've eaten in beautiful restaurants with thoughtful food where the music was so aggressively wrong—too loud, too aggressive, too disconnected from the space—that I finished quickly and left. Music affects dwell time, check averages, staff morale, and whether people come back.

Your music should be intentional. It should support what you're trying to create. If you're a fast casual operation trying to turn tables, uptempo music actually works—studies show it increases eating speed without customers consciously noticing. If you're trying to encourage lingering and additional beverage orders, slower tempos and lower volumes do exactly that. If your brand identity is punk rock tacos and skateboard culture, then commit to that aurally. If you're selling green juices and wellness, your soundtrack should support that narrative.

The food truck operators have it easiest here—many of you don't need music at all. You're in public spaces with ambient sound, quick transactions, customers who are ordering and leaving. Unless you're doing events where you're creating an extended environment, you might not need licensing. But the moment you're playing music to attract customers or enhance their experience, you're back in licensing territory.

For everyone else: this isn't optional. This isn't bureaucratic nonsense that you can ignore until someone catches you. This is the cost of using other people's creative work to make your business better. The music you play was written by someone, recorded by someone, produced by someone. Those people deserve to be paid for their work, just like you deserve to be paid for yours.

Get legal. Stay legal. And while you're at it, think hard about what you're playing and why. Because the right music, properly licensed and thoughtfully deployed, isn't an expense. It's part of your operation, as essential as your menu design or your lighting. It's the thing people feel even when they don't consciously hear it.

That shop owner in Queens? He eventually discovered Soundtrack Your Brand, got properly licensed, and kept playing Coltrane. Because the music mattered. Now it just also happens to be legal.

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