How Shazam Left a Gym Chain With a A$260k Bill for Unlicensed Music

A NSW gym chain owner was ordered to pay more than A$260,000 after playing unlicensed music in classes, and an everyday phone app helped prove it. The story is a blueprint for exactly what not to do.

The Shazam sting

Kieran Turner ran eight “S1” gym companies across NSW and Victoria, including sites in Bondi, Caringbah and Prahran. When APRA came to believe the gyms were playing protected music without a licence, it sent compliance officers into the venues. One officer joined a fitness class at the S1 Caringbah gym in November 2022 and used his phone, and the song-recognition app Shazam, to record exactly which tracks were being played.

Members were sweating through “SWEAT 1000” classes to hits like the Vengaboys’ We Like to Party, Avicii’s Wake Me Up, AC/DC’s TNT and Ariana Grande. Every one of those tracks needed a licence the gym did not hold.

”Simply ignored” the warnings

Turner had been offered a licence by both APRA and OneMusic and did not accept it. The judge found he “simply ignored” repeated warnings, sent from May 2022, that he needed a licence to use the songs in classes. That refusal is what turned a routine licence into a court case.

• A$235,398 in damages and interest ordered against five companies and their director, before legal costs.
• A$260k+ the total once legal costs are added, for music a licence would have covered for a fraction of that.

Your streaming app does not cover you

The most common misconception in fitness is that a Spotify or Apple Music subscription is enough. It is not. Those accounts are licensed for personal, domestic use only. The moment you press play in a class, a studio or on the gym floor, that is a public performance and it needs a commercial licence, regardless of the speaker, the device or the volume.

Play legally from A$9.99/month

Melodial gives gyms and studios high-BPM, class-ready music with the commercial licence already included, from A$9.99/month. Because the catalogue is licensed directly, there are no separate OneMusic fees and no gap for a compliance officer to find, and you get a Certificate of Compliance to prove it. No court, no Shazam surprise, no A$260k.