All You Need to Know About Playing Licensed Music in the Workplace -

All You Need to Know About Playing Licensed Music in the Workplace - You may be aware of the importance of playing music at the workplace. Perhaps you’ve already done your research and found that it can boost your workers’ performance. However, you may not know much about the type of music you are playing and the importance of playing licensed music. Let’s find out more about playing licensed music. Can you stream music form iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify? The short and simple answer is that you cannot. There are two main forms of music streaming. B2C, which is business to consumer and B2B, which means business to business. The majority of music streaming services are B2C which means they are meant for the consumer and not business. In other words, the licenses are for private use. Since the business environment is considered to be a public place, it would be against the law to do this. Can you play music bought from iTunes? Most people get confused as to whether they own the music that they buy from iTunes. However, you should know that when you purchase music you do not own the content but have essentially obtained a license to use the music. You would be violating copyright laws if you played the music at the workplace since it is considered a public setting. How to obtain licenses to play music at the workplace If you live in the US or Canada there are 4 organizations that offer performing rights. These include ASCAP or the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; GMR or Global Music Rights, BMI or Broadcast Music Inc. and lastly SOCAN or the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada. Any business owner needs to obtain a license to play music. There are different ways through which you can do this one of which is to use companies that pay for the licenses themselves such as Cloud Cover Music. If for example, you were able to obtain a license for a certain PRO, you can play the music listed in the catalogue of that PRO. Do you need to register with all performing rights organizations? It depends on the type of music that you wish to be playing at your business premises. If say you were to register with one organization, you can only play the music that is in that organization’s catalogue. But what if you wanted to play music that is in another organization’s catalogue? Well, the simple answer is that you will need to register with this other organization. Once you understand the regulations of playing music in your business premises, you can ensure that you are not breaking any copyright regulations.