How Much Is Background Music Really Costing Your Stores?
For multi-location businesses, understanding how background music actually works can help you avoid unnecessary costs, ensure safe licenses, and free up your team and time for more important tasks.
As an owner, manager, or operations lead, your background music in-store probably isn't a top priority. You've got stores to run, employees to manage, and bigger budget priorities than your in-store playlist. For the most part, music feels like a small operational detail, at least until you start to grow.
For multi-location businesses, understanding how background music actually works can help you avoid unnecessary costs, ensure safe licenses, and free up your team and time for more important tasks. In this post, we break down the real cost of playing music in your stores: why those costs scale faster than you'd expect, and what matters most when choosing a background music solution.
The Real Cost of Background Music …
When businesses think about the cost of music, they usually think about one number: the price of the music service or subscription they have. Unfortunately, that's only part of the equation. Total cost also includes public performance or collecting-society fees, internal administration (e.g., setting up the sound, choosing playlists, preventing Jon from playing metal music all day), and the legal risk of using music without the correct rights.
Think of it this way: Real music cost = service subscription + administration + legal risk.
For one location, none of that draws too much attention. But when you multiply that across 15, 20, or 50 locations, the story starts to look different.
Say a music-related cost runs you €500/location per year. For one store, that amount is (usually) not worth a second look. Across 50 locations, that same cost becomes €25,000 every year. A number definitely worthy of more attention.
The point is: small recurring costs stop being small once you multiply them across an entire network. And, for those with only a few locations, music costs become more than just the service fee. Brand consistency, administrative burden, and legal reliability all impact bottom-line costs.
This is what makes background music worth reviewing the same way you'd review any other recurring operational expense. In other words: seriously.
Why Do Music Costs Increase So Quickly Across Multiple Stores?
A lot of traditional music licensing is built around individual commercial locations that are looking to play popular, well-known music. Depending on where your stores operate and which music you play, your business may need licences covering the public performance (”store plays”) of copyrighted music. This music is usually managed by Collective Management Organisations, or CMOs.
If you specifically want to play well-known commercial artists, this licensing model makes sense. Artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels need to be compensated when their music is used commercially.
But here's the question any business should ask: are these mainstream songs actually necessary? Does your customer experience genuinely depend on globally recognised artists, or do you mainly need good music that fits your brand, sets the right atmosphere, and can be used legally across every store?
Those are two different requirements, and they don't rely on the same licensing model.
Alternative (aka “non-mainstream”) catalogues are able to run on different rights structures, including direct licensing from artists and rights holders. Depending on the country and rights involved, that can meaningfully change what you're paying to play music in-store. For a business operating dozens of locations, this is a cost difference that can drastically decrease expenses.
Why Did Mainstream Music Become the Default?
For a long time, the obvious approach to background music was simple: turn on the radio, play the top hits of the season, build a playlist full of songs customers already know. This habit carried straight into the streaming era.
Though this opened the door to playing more music than ever before, it came with a problem: access to music and the right to use music commercially aren’t the same thing. A personal Spotify subscription, for example, gives you access to an enormous catalogue, but Spotify specifically limits its service to personal, non-commercial use.
Paying for Spotify Premium or another streaming subscription doesn't automatically give a shop, restaurant, hotel, or other commercial venue permission to play that catalogue publicly. This is where a lot of businesses get tripped up.
The question isn't just "What music do we want to play?" It's also "Do we have the legal rights to play it?"
The good news is: businesses have more options today for legal in-store music than ever before. Alongside traditional “mainstream” catalogues, there are independent catalogues, directly licensable tracks, and background music platforms built specifically for commercial spaces. Although these alternatives may not include the top pop song of the season, they offer businesses a high-quality way to play music in their establishment without insane overhead.
Of course, if having the latest chart hits is central to your brand, traditional commercial licensing may be exactly what you need. If your goal is simply the right atmosphere with good quality music, it's worth understanding what else is out there.
The Financial Risk of Getting Music Licensing Wrong
Music licensing gets uncomfortable when nobody inside the company can explain how the current setup actually works. Who provides the music? What rights are included? Does the licence cover commercial public performance? (Does anyone even know what commercial public performance is?) Do licenses apply in every country where you operate? Can each store prove it's covered?
These aren't questions you want to be scrambling to answer after a collecting society, inspector, or other rights representative has already contacted one of your locations. Depending on the country and circumstances, businesses using music without the necessary rights can face payment requests, claims, penalties, or other legal action. Especially because exact rules differ across territories, clear documentation matters even more for businesses operating across several markets.
A strong background music setup should give you more than access to playlists and quality music. Your provider should be able to explain what's licensed, how it's licensed, and what documentation exists to prove your locations are covered. If nobody can answer those questions, the cheapest music solution can quickly turn into the most expensive one.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Puts in the Music Budget
Besides licensing, there's also the time your company spends just making music work. Think setup for your sound systems, adjusting the playlists, changing the playlists as the day progresses, skipping tracks that weirdly don’t match the mood of the room, and when your business grows to multiple locations—this becomes issues of brand consistency and someone managing these issues in every single location. Yikes.
When a new store opens, somebody needs to setup the music, create or distribute access, confirm the right licence is in place, and keep the documentation on file. Doing that once is easy. Doing it repeatedly across a growing chain becomes another operational process your team has to own.
Someone has to manage the music.
Giving each store full control of the music played sounds like the easy business decision until every location starts doing something different. One manager builds a playlist. Another turns on the radio. One unknowing employee logs into their personal streaming account. Another has been playing the same 40 songs for six months straight. Suddenly your customer experience depends entirely on whoever happens to be working that day.
Having a centralized, curated music set-up removes administration and upkeep work, while keeping your business’ atmosphere consistent across every store. It’s this consistency that helps build customer familiarity while positively increasing linger time, sales, and trust ( ).
Your employees hear the music more than your customers do.
A customer might spend 20 minutes in your store or a few days in your hotel, whereas an employee may spend hours, weeks, or months of their lives there. A short playlist that sounds fine on a quick or temporary visit can turn painfully repetitive over an entire working week. (We all love Beyoncé, but 50 plays later, you’d likely want some variety). It’s for this reason that catalogue depth, music variety, regular updates, and good curation matter for customers and staff alike.
Poor documentation becomes its own tediously frustrating workload.
If every location has a different contract, invoice, certificate, or explanation of its music rights, what used to be a relatively simple compliance question turns into an administrative hide-and-seek. And not the fun kind. Good documentation has real value because your teams shouldn't need to become copyright experts just to explain why the music playing in-store is legally covered.
What Should a Multi-Location Business Actually Look For?
Now, we’re not saying the cheapest music service is automatically the best option. Neither is the one with the biggest catalogue. Before choosing a provider, there are five questions worth asking:
1. Is commercial use clearly covered?
This is an obvious one, but easily misunderstood. The service you choose should be built for commercial spaces. Access to a song doesn't automatically mean you're allowed to play it publicly in a business, even if it says ‘royalty-free’ or ‘free to play’. Your provider should be able to explain exactly which rights are included and where the license applies (countries, venues, platforms, etc.)
2. Can you (easily) prove your stores are licensed?
If somebody contacts one of your locations—usually a CMO requesting proof or a payment claim—your team should be able to produce clear documentation on the spot. Ask whether certificates, license agreements, or other proof of coverage exist for each store (and how easy it is to access). You don’t want to be administratively stuck when you have fine allegations aimed at your business.
3. Does the pricing make sense as you grow?
If you’re a multi-location business or potentially planning to grow in the future, find a pricing model that scales as you do. A music service that looks perfectly reasonable for a small, one-location business can become a lot more expensive once it's applied across an entire chain or across different territories.
4. Can you manage everything centrally?
Adding stores, pulling documentation, changing music, managing accounts, solving technical issues—none of that should require a separate process for every single location. The bigger your business gets, the more centralised management matters, and your music service should align with this too.
5. Is the music actually good?
Legal simplicity and cost savings don't count for much if nobody actually wants to listen to the music. (Yikes). Consider genre range, how frequently playlists/radios are updated, the curation quality, and whether the catalogue actually fits your brand. The goal isn't just to play something legally and low-cost; it's to play music that actually works in your space and matches your customers’ expectations.
When Does Traditional Music Licensing Still Make Sense?
Non-mainstream licensing isn't automatically the right answer for every business. If playing major commercial artists is a real part of your customer experience, the costs tied to that music may be completely justified. A fashion brand built around current pop culture is going to value recognisable chart music very differently than a hotel spa, restaurant group, supermarket, or furniture chain would. What matters is making that choice deliberately, not by default.
If recognizable commercial hits aren't essential, your priorities probably look a bit different: predictable costs, legal security, centralized management, clear certificates, reliable music, and every location running on the same setup and brand tone. In that case, alternative catalogues are worth a real consideration and will likely save you significant capital in the process.
A Different Approach to Background Music
If you’re looking for music that guarantees legal security and centralized control at an affordable price, Jamendo works from a catalogue of independent music licensed specifically for commercial use. Rather than licensing mainstream commercial tracks through the traditional model, businesses can access curated background music built for centralized control, scale, and legal safety.
Jamendo In-Store clients receive curated, ad-free radio stations updated monthly with new tracks specifically designed for commercial use. Each subscription includes an instantly downloadable license certificate verifying the client, coverage duration, and authorized location. For larger chains, the setup adapts to multi-location businesses too, with centralized management and pricing based on the scale of the project.
The result is a genuinely different way to think about background music. You still need good music, you still need to compensate the artists who made it, and you still need clear rights. What you may not need is the same licensing model your business has been defaulting to for years.
So, How Much Is Your Background Music Really Costing You?
If you already know exactly what you're paying, what rights you're getting, and why your current setup is the right fit for your business, you're ahead of most companies. If you don't, it's worth taking the time to learn a few of the essentials.
Start by looking at the total annual cost across every location. Check the rights included, the paperwork your stores actually receive, the time your team spends managing music, and whether the catalogue itself still fits what your business needs.
Background music may never become your top priority, but it shouldn't become your biggest business expense, either.