Can you legally play Spotify in your business?
Short answer: no. Here’s why personal streaming apps aren’t legal for venues — and what to use instead.
It’s one of the most common questions venue owners ask: “Can I just play Spotify in my café?” The short answer is no — and it’s worth understanding why before an inspector or a rights organisation explains it for you.
Personal streaming is for personal use
Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube are licensed for personal, non-commercial listening. Their terms of service explicitly forbid public or commercial use. Playing them for customers in a venue breaches those terms — your account can be suspended, and more importantly, it does not cover the public-performance rights your venue legally needs.
Two things are involved
Playing recorded music in public usually touches two layers of rights:
- The music itself must be licensed for commercial use (a business music service provides this).
- Public-performance royalties must be paid to your country’s collecting society (PRO) — e.g. SOKOJ in Serbia, GEMA in Germany, SACEM in France, SIAE in Italy, PPL PRS in the UK.
A consumer app gives you neither. A proper business music service gives you the first — but the local performance fee is still the venue’s responsibility, by law, in each country.
The legal way to play music
Use a service licensed for business, like MUSICDJ. You get a commercial-cleared catalog, curated and scheduled for your brand, on any device. You then register with your local collecting society for the public-performance fee — we’ll point you to the right organisation for your country. No grey areas, no risk of fines.
Want music that fits your brand and a platform that also runs your menus, screens and a guest jukebox? Start free with the MUSICDJ Web Player.
