Ppl music licensce

logan77

HI - ive been contacted by PPL for £136 fee to play music in my shop. any info on this from anyone. is it law? is that fee reaseonable? any way to avoid it as every penny counts. i dont want to pay it as i bought the cd already to listen to it at work.

corbyboy

You will need this licence to play music in public. Not only that, but you will need a licence from the PRS too.

That's right, you need two licences to play music in public.

spenderdave

We have just had to take out a PPL licence via Christian Copyright for our church so we can play CDs etc. The law has been changed and this is now mandatory for any organisation that plays music to the public. But your £136 looks excessive, ours is only £32/year.

antrobus

spenderdave wrote: »

We have just had to take out a PPL licence via Christian Copyright for our church so we can play CDs etc. The law has been changed and this is now mandatory for any organisation that plays music to the public. But your £136 looks excessive, ours is only £32/year.

PPL has different scales of charges for different kinds of businesses. A 'church' is not in the same category as a 'shop'. A quick shufty at http://www.ppluk.com confirms that a licence for a shop starts at £113.19 a year, whilst community buildings can get a joint PPL/PRS licence for only £42 a year.

£136 might therefore be right, since for shops the cost varies by the size of the shop.

paulwf

logan77 there is a huge thread about ppl/prs on this board somewhere that might be worth a search.

Basically you have to ppl and prs licenses unless you either go for non-copyrighted music or don't play any. That means for a vast majority of retailers you just have to pay up. If you aren't sure if your fee is correct call them up, they've been helpful when I've had questions in the past.

There are loads of fees I hate like bank charges, buildings insurance, getting my fire alarm system checked every 6 months and so on. Unfortunately it is just one of the things you have to pay.

Princess_Coupon

Playing a tv music channel would get round it I think? but then of course you would need a tv licence

Owain_Moneysaver

Princess_Coupon wrote: »

Playing a tv music channel would get round it I think? but then of course you would need a tv licence

It would still be 'public performance'. Shops have been caught for having a radio on.

jexygirl

Playing TV with music channel DOES NOT get around it, even though you would be paying the commercial sky rates to have it, nor does playing the radio, despite your customers listening in their cars on their way to you... you still have to have ppl/prs if you play any sort of live or recorded music /have TVs on etc - the ONLY way around it is copyright free music.

We used to have live bands that paid their own prs to perform covers, but we still had to pay it again when they played at our venue as well as having to pay a ppl... and no set list was required - all that money just goes into a massive melting pot, not direct to the artist as they would have you believe.

But I'm not bitter....