Music Licensing for Chains, Brands & Groups

Music licensing for multi-site operators, without the multiplying bills

Hotels, shopping centres and national retail chains face the same licensing law as a corner café, but multiplied across every site, zone and tariff. Here's how the costs and the complexity scale, and how Melodial Plus replaces it all with one platform.

Do we need a licence? Yes, at every site

Every location is a public performance

Playing recorded music where customers or staff can hear it is a public performance. In nearly every country that requires a licence, whether the music comes from the radio, a TV, a CD or a streaming app. Personal Spotify or Apple Music accounts explicitly forbid business use.

The licence attaches to the place the music plays, not the company. Every venue, in every country, must be covered on its own, so a growing estate means the fees, the collecting societies and the admin all multiply. That is exactly the cost Melodial Plus is built to collapse.

One society per territory
United Kingdom PPL PRS
Australia & New Zealand OneMusic
United States ASCAP · BMI · SESAC · GMR
Ireland IMRO · PPI
South Africa SAMRO · SAMPRA · CAPASSO

Operate in three countries and you juggle three sets of agreements, tariffs and renewals, before a single track plays.

Why multi-site is harder

One hotel can run five different streams, and five licences

A single property rarely plays one playlist. The lobby, bar, restaurant, pool and gym each want their own sound, so each is a separate music stream, with its own collecting-society tariff and its own streaming subscription. Then it all repeats at the next property.

Melodial replaces the whole stack: one platform, central control of every stream and site, and a flat per-stream price, no tariff guesswork, no second vendor.

One hotel · traditional licensing
Lobby Tariff A
Bar Tariff B
Restaurant Tariff C
Pool Tariff D
Gym Tariff E
With Melodial, one flat price per stream
The maths at scale

One price. Every site. Nothing to reconcile.

Traditional licensing charges per stream, per site, and adds a music subscription on top. Melodial Plus is one flat price per stream, however many sites and zones you run.

The traditional way

Two bills, at every site

1
collecting-society tariffs, per streamHigher for bigger venues, and different in every country.
2
A separate music subscriptionPer site, on top of the tariff.

Every new site and zone multiplies both bills, and the admin.

The Melodial Plus way
$13.99/month per stream

Melodial Plus. One flat price per stream, however many sites and zones. Central control, no collecting-society tariffs to reconcile, no second subscription.

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Melodial Plus

One single platform to run every site

Central multi-site control

Manage every location and stream from one dashboard, with brand guidelines applied everywhere.

Scheduling & dayparting

Schedule playlists by day, daypart, stream or location across the whole estate.

Audio ad creator

Create AI voiceover spots and target them to specific sites, streams or times.

User permissions

Give local managers the right access and limit what each user can change.

Flat per-stream pricing

Every stream is the same price, no per-zone collecting-society tariffs to decode or reconcile.

Compliance built in

A Certificate of Compliance for every location, downloadable any time.

Going further

Curated playlists for your brand

For groups that want a signature sound, our team curates a ~12-hour playlist around your brand and refreshes it every two months, playable across all your Plus streams and locations.

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Fully bespoke

Custom music, produced to order

When off-the-shelf won't do, we produce original music to your scope, a sound that's entirely yours, with the same ongoing refreshes as curated.

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Questions from operators

How does Melodial Plus pricing work, per site or per stream?
Per stream. A stream is one music zone playing its own playlist. Plus is $13.99/month (or $139.99/year) per stream, with ads, scheduling, zone control and multi-user permissions included, no separate collecting society fees and no second streaming bill. A site that plays one playlist everywhere needs one stream; a hotel with several different-music areas needs one per area.
A hotel plays different music in different areas, how many licences is that?
One per stream. If your lobby, bar, restaurant, pool and gym each play their own music, that is five streams, so five Melodial Plus licences. The difference from traditional licensing is that every stream is the same flat price, there is no separate collecting-society tariff and no second subscription for each zone. (Legally, Melodial provides a single direct licence to your business; the per-stream count is simply how the software is licensed.)
What if some areas share the same playlist?
Then they share a stream. If your whole store or several zones play exactly the same music on the same schedule, that is a single stream and a single Plus licence. You only add streams when an area needs its own independent music.
Can local managers control their own site?
Yes. Plus includes multi-user permissions: set brand guidelines and schedules centrally, then give each site or manager the access you choose, and limit what they can change.
What about chart hits in our venues?
If a location plays commercially released mainstream music, that music still needs a collecting society licence. To be fully covered without it across the estate, play Melodial exclusively, our catalogue spans 25+ genres with no explicit lyrics.
Can you produce a sound that is unique to our brand?
Yes. Our Curated service builds a ~12-hour playlist around your brand and refreshes it every two months across all your Plus streams. Our Custom service goes further and produces original music to order. Talk to Sales to scope either.

Let's map the savings across your estate

Tell us how many sites and streams you run and we'll model the move from society fees plus a vendor to a single Melodial Plus platform.

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