The short answer is no. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon Music are consumer services, licensed for personal use only. The moment a song plays in a room open to the public, a different set of rules applies — and in the United States those rules are enforced by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. This is not a gray area. It is written in the terms of service you agreed to when you signed up.
No credit card required for the trial. Cancel anytime. Direct license certificate included, legally recognized for public performance in US venues.
Most small cafe owners only find out about this after an ASCAP or BMI representative walks in. The clause has been in the Spotify contract from day one. No one reads it, but it is binding the moment the account is created.
The Spotify Terms and Conditions of Use, accepted by every user at signup, state clearly that the service is provided "for your personal, non-commercial use only". The same restriction appears in the Apple Music Terms of Service, the YouTube Music subscription agreement and the Amazon Music terms. This language is not marketing copy. It is the legal foundation on which the consumer license is built. It is the reason Spotify can offer 100 million songs for $11.99 per month: the price reflects a personal license, not a public performance license.
A coffee shop is, by definition, open to the public. The music heard by customers ordering a latte, working on a laptop or waiting for takeout is a public performance of a copyrighted work, and in the United States public performance is regulated under 17 U.S. Code Section 106, which gives copyright holders the exclusive right to control public performance of their work. The Spotify subscription does not transfer with the music to the room. It stays with the individual account holder, in private.
Some cafe owners assume that paying for Premium solves the problem. It does not. Premium removes ads and unlocks offline listening, but it does not change the nature of the license. Others assume that a small volume, or a back-of-house setup, makes it okay. It does not. The legal test is whether customers can hear the music. If they can, a public performance is happening, and a proper license is required — either PRO blanket licenses from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, or a direct license from a rightsholder such as My Corporate Radio.
Unlike most countries, the United States has three main Performance Rights Organizations, each representing a different pool of songwriters and publishers. A small cafe typically needs a blanket license from all three to legally cover whatever might play on its speakers.
The combined annual cost of ASCAP, BMI and SESAC blanket licenses for a typical small independent cafe ranges between $600 and $1500 per year. Each PRO bills separately, with its own rate card based on venue square footage, hours of music per week, seating capacity and whether live entertainment is offered.
Fees scale up significantly for larger venues, and the combined annual bill for a mid-sized restaurant or bar can exceed $3,000 before any music service subscription is added on top.
ASCAP and BMI are both known to contact small business owners proactively, by phone and by in-person visits, and to pursue unlicensed venues through civil litigation. Statutory damages under 17 U.S. Code Section 504 can range from $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, and a cafe playing unlicensed music for several weeks can easily be accused of infringing hundreds of works.
Figures are indicative ranges published by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC for small hospitality venues. Request exact quotes from ascap.com, bmi.com and sesac.com for your exact venue profile.
Music in a cafe is not background noise. Forty years of academic research in consumer psychology have documented a clear, measurable effect of music on how long customers stay and how much they spend. The foundational studies were conducted in American venues.
Ronald E. Milliman (1986), published in the Journal of Consumer Research, ran the first systematic experiment on the effect of background music in a hospitality venue — an American restaurant. By alternating slow music (under 72 BPM) and fast music (over 94 BPM) in the same restaurant on different days, Milliman observed that customers exposed to slow music spent significantly more at the bar and stayed at their tables longer. The mechanism is called motor entrainment: the human body unconsciously synchronizes its rhythms — chewing, walking, gesture — with the external tempo it perceives. The Milliman study remains one of the most cited papers in consumer behavior research to this day.
Clare Caldwell & Sally A. Hibbert (2002), published in Psychology & Marketing, replicated the experiment in a different setting with rigorous methodology, observing 62 covers across several evenings. Customers exposed to slow music stayed an average of 15.03 minutes longer than those exposed to fast music (t=-2.43, p<.05), with a correlation between music preference and total spend of r=0.45, particularly strong on drinks. The findings confirmed and strengthened Milliman's original results.
Adrian C. North, Amber Shilcock & David J. Hargreaves (2003), in Environment and Behavior, tested the effect of music style in an upscale restaurant over 18 evenings. With classical music, average spend per cover was significantly higher than with pop or silence, and the effect applied to both appetizers and entrees. The mechanism is called musical fit: music coherent with the perceived positioning of the venue produces purchase choices coherent with that positioning.
Sources: Milliman (1986), Journal of Consumer Research. Caldwell & Hibbert (2002), Psychology & Marketing 19(11), 895-917. North, Shilcock & Hargreaves (2003), Environment and Behavior.
There is a legal way to skip the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC fees entirely on the music you play. It is called a direct license, and it works like this: instead of paying PROs on top of a music service, you use a catalog owned and licensed directly by its producer. No PRO representation, no PRO fees on that specific music.
Under the US Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code), copyright holders are free to license their own works directly to users, without going through a Performance Rights Organization. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC only collect royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers that have affiliated with them. Tracks whose rightsholder has chosen to license directly, outside those organizations, fall outside their collection scope. This is the legal foundation of a direct license, and it is the mechanism used by My Corporate Radio.
The entire catalog broadcast through My Corporate Radio is owned outright by the company. The music is AI-crafted under the creative supervision of Emanuele Carocci, an Italian radio broadcaster with over twenty years of experience on national radio, currently co-hosting the morning show on RTL 102.5, the most listened-to national radio station in Italy, Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 AM. No track in the catalog is registered with ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR or any other US Performance Rights Organization, because My Corporate Radio itself is the rightsholder and the licensor, and holds the right to license the music directly to US venues.
Every customer receives a written direct license certificate, issued in the cafe business name, with explicit references to the legal framework that governs direct licensing. If an ASCAP or BMI representative visits the premises, the certificate is the legal answer. The catalog sits outside the scope of US collective management, because under the same framework that governs ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, directly licensed works do not need to be inside it.
My Corporate Radio broadcasts five curated stations, each designed for a specific mood and a specific moment in the cafe day. Weekly updates, no ads, no interruptions.
Light, warm and positive. The right tempo for the morning rush between 7 and 10 AM, when customers want a lift before the day starts. Acoustic pop, sunny soul, soft indie.
Subtle and instrumental. Designed for the hours when customers work on laptops or stay longer with a second coffee. Contemporary jazz, soft electronic, modern classical.
Calm and ambient. For early afternoons, rainy Seattle days, or any moment when the room should slow down. Warm piano, gentle strings, minimalist electronics.
Jazz and lounge, the sound of a well-designed room after 6 PM. Ideal for cafes that transition into wine bars or quiet dinner venues.
Higher tempo, brighter dynamics. For busy service moments, takeout counters and venues that match the pace of a working downtown.
Groove and rhythm, for late openings, weekend brunches and special events. Not aggressive, never cheesy. A contemporary party feel that brings energy without forcing the room.
My Corporate Radio does not hide what the catalog is or how it is produced. Transparency is part of the positioning, not a footnote.
The music broadcast on all five stations is AI-crafted under human creative supervision, using professional licensed tools. The creative direction — the mood of each station, the rotation logic, the weekly updates, the curation standards — is the work of a radio broadcaster with twenty years of experience. The AI is a production tool. The radio professional is the editor.
This model is declared explicitly on every license certificate, in line with the EU AI Act (EU Regulation 2024/1689), which requires transparency whenever content is generated with artificial intelligence. Although the EU AI Act does not directly apply to US venues, My Corporate Radio discloses AI use globally, because disclosure is the only honest stance and the most resilient one commercially. A catalog that is openly AI-crafted cannot be unmasked, because nothing is hidden.
The advantage for a US cafe owner is concrete. A proprietary AI-crafted catalog has no per-stream royalty owed to external rightsholders, and that cost structure is passed on in the subscription price. This is why the international plan sits at $16.99 per month, roughly half the entry price of Soundtrack Your Brand, the best-known B2B alternative in the US market.
No. Spotify Free, Premium, Family and Student are consumer subscriptions, explicitly restricted to personal, non-commercial use under the Spotify terms of service. A US cafe open to the public is a commercial venue, and playing consumer streaming there is both a breach of the Spotify contract and an unlicensed public performance under 17 U.S. Code Section 106, enforced by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.
In most cases yes. Unlike the UK or Germany, the United States has three main Performance Rights Organizations, each representing a different pool of songwriters and publishers. A typical small cafe needs a blanket license from all three to cover the full repertoire it might play on its speakers.
For a typical small independent cafe, the combined annual cost of ASCAP, BMI and SESAC blanket licenses usually ranges between 600 and 1500 dollars per year. Each PRO bills separately and uses its own rate card based on venue size, hours of music, occupancy and whether live entertainment is offered.
Yes. The catalog is proprietary and licensed directly to the customer. No ASCAP, BMI or SESAC fee applies to this specific catalog, because none of these organizations collects on behalf of tracks licensed directly by their rightsholder. The customer receives a written certificate confirming the legal basis of the license.
Show them the direct license certificate. It is issued in your business name and confirms that the music being played is licensed outside the PRO framework. Since the catalog is not registered with ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, those organizations have no enforcement grounds over that specific music.
The international plan is $16.99 per month. Billing is in EUR at the $16.99 equivalent, with the final amount on your card adjusted by your bank's exchange rate. Seven-day free trial, no credit card required, cancel anytime. No setup fee, no contract, no lock-in.
No. A direct license covers the My Corporate Radio catalog only. If your cafe hosts live music, DJ sets with third-party tracks, karaoke nights, or plays terrestrial radio (like NPR or a local FM station) in the background, you still need separate ASCAP, BMI and SESAC licenses for those additional sources. Many of our US cafe customers run My Corporate Radio as their primary background music and hold PRO blanket licenses only for specific live event nights.
One plan. One price. Five curated stations. Direct license certificate included. No credit card required for the trial.
For independent coffee shops, cafes, small restaurants, boutique retailers, salons and spas with a single location.
No credit card required for the trial. Your bank applies the EUR to USD exchange rate on each billing.
More about music licensing and sound design for US hospitality.