If you play music in your business to customers or staff, you need permission from the copyright holders – the people who write and perform the music. It is a legal requirement under The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. It would be impractical to contact them all individually so you can get blanket permission to the majority of commercially available music by getting a licence from PPLPRS.

PPL PRS Ltd started licensing businesses in February 2018 after its parent companies, PPL Ltd and PRS for Music created the joint venture to licence and invoice together. Prior to this, licenses would have been obtained separately from each company. The parent companies still decide on their own tariffs and charges are listed separately. The biggest practical difference to you is now receiving just one invoice per annum. Their details: PPL PRS Limited - TheMusicLicence Mercury Place St George Street Leicester LE1 1QG www.pplprs.co.uk

There are 114 tariffs covering different types of music use from both PPL and PRS for Music. As mentioned above, if you play original artist music through any device or television you will need coverage from both societies. If you play soundalikes, you'll still need the PRS element of the licence. The metrics used to calculate fees include things like room size, number of staff, number of events, duration of events, attendance and/or a mixture of these and other information. Sadly, some of the tariffs require different information for each society which can confuse things. Once information has been provided a quote is produced and it is your responsibility to make sure it’s correct. You are charged 12 months in advance and have the opportunity to adjust use at your annual review both backwards by providing accurate actual details and then for the coming year. You also have the right to any unused portion of your licence should you remove music or sell your business.

It’s only PPLPRS and their parent companies who licence original artist music here in the UK. There are ways of adjusting your exposure to licence fees though depending on what type of business you are and how important/integral music is to you. Remove music from unnecessary areas. Sounds obvious but removing non-essential music/TV could rack up savings quite quickly. Also, muting a TV for example means that no music licenses are required as no audio can be heard. Play copyright free content. Copyright or royalty free music has changed hugely over the past 10 years. There are numerous suppliers of this type of content and the choice of tracks runs into the hundreds of thousands. Staff/customers won’t recognise the music so you won’t have that familiarity but there are studies that say music like this allows customers to focus on purchases and not get distracted. Play Soundalikes. A halfway house between original artists and royalty free, Soundalikes are popular commercial tracks performed by session musicians not the original recording. This means that only a PRS licence is required and PPL cost is removed. Contact us to explore all the options that might be open to you.

We’re a group of former PRS for Music and PPL employees who use our collective 45 years’ experience in music licensing to help our clients get licensed correctly. We were founded in early 2014 and have saved millions of pounds of unnecessary licence fees since then for thousands of premises across the UK. We are happy to help any customer who uses music within their premises and have clients in the following sectors: Pubs & Bars Hotels Nightclubs Casinos Gyms/Leisure Centres Restaurants Stadiums/Sporting facilities Warehouses Offices Retail

We make sure your licence fees are as correct as they possibly can be, meaning you only ever pay for the music you use. We do this by taking responsibility for collating the declarations from your premises, using bespoke systems and processes to eliminate guesswork and get to the most accurate numbers. The benefit of this is 2-fold. Your business is able to focus its energies on business as usual knowing this time-consuming exercise is being looked after and be comfortable that you’re paying the lowest possible fee while remaining compliant.

This is always dependant on how accurate declarations have been before and, of course, can’t be guaranteed. Our average savings to date is 19% and we’ve hit 50% and over on a number of occasions. We can’t give any promises, but if it’s there we’ll find it.

It is, and always will be, 100% free to find out if we're able to help you. All we need is your last set of bills or a quote to review your current or anticipated music use. After that, there are a couple of options when we’re putting a propsal together for you. If appropriate, the option of no saving no fee is available to new customers. This means we’ll only charge a percentage of what we’re able to get for you in credits and reductions on licence fees and our involvement is totally cost neutral. In year 2 and beyond, or if the project is more admin heavy (there may be old licenses to correct, move round legal entities/names etc) we charge a pre agreed flat fee per site so you know the cost of the renewal before we start. This cost is dependent on number of sites and the tariffs involved but is always set at a level which represents value for all parties.

In recent years we've been doing more work on our clients' MPLC and TV licenses as we're often capturing relevant data at the review. This means we can make sure the cost for utilising TV's in the business is fully manaaged too. For more information: Motion Picture Licensing Company (MPLC) MPLC House Saffrons Road Eastbourne East Sussex BN21 1DG www.themplc.co.uk