Most UK cafes that play recorded music where customers can hear it need TheMusicLicence, which bundles PPL and PRS into one annual payment.
PPL PRS's own January 2026 example prices a café of up to 30 seats in 400 m² or less at £400.81 + VAT a year for background music, scaling with floor area, seating, devices, staff, and hours.
A personal Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube account is licensed for private listening only and never covers playing to customers.
Licensing and day-to-day scheduling are separate jobs; use the dedicated café schedule guide for the operational plan.
Sonosfera directly licenses its own catalogue and positions it outside PRO repertoire; neighbouring-rights treatment is confirmed per market, and the scope never extends to third-party playback.
Sonosfera was started by a salon operator who got caught out by PPL/PRS licensing letters and built the music platform they wished existed. The team behind this blog has spent years inside hair and beauty businesses, clinics, and hospitality venues — booking the bills, dealing with the licensing letters, and learning the hard way that most Spotify playlists don't work for a professional environment.
How much is a PRS licence for a cafe? UK music licence guide
By Sonosfera Team
Running music in a cafe involves two jobs that owners can mistake for one. This guide covers the legal and source-evidence job: the right to play recorded music where customers can hear it. The separate café music schedule guide covers opening, work-friendly hours, lunch and close.
This guide explains what TheMusicLicence costs in 2026 with dated figures, why consumer streaming is a trap and which evidence to keep. It is written for independent UK cafe and coffee-shop owners setting music up for the first time—or checking whether an inherited setup is legal. It is general guidance, not legal advice for unusual cases such as live bands, ticketed events, broadcasting or uploading music to your own channels.
Two verified numbers anchor the money side, both current as of early 2026:
The money question
Figure
Source
TheMusicLicence — background music, café up to 30 seats in ≤400 m²
Everything below explains where those numbers come from and which route fits your room.
The two rights you are actually paying for
When a track plays in your cafe, two sets of rights holders are owed money: the songwriters and publishers, represented in the UK by PRS for Music, and the performers and record labels, represented by PPL. Since 2018 the two collect together through PPL PRS Ltd under a single product, TheMusicLicence, so most cafes now make one annual payment covering both rather than chasing two separate agreements.
That is why you used to hear about "a PRS licence and a PPL licence" as if they were two errands. The UK Intellectual Property Office is blunt about the underlying rule: businesses that play music in public normally need permission from the relevant collecting societies. TheMusicLicence packages that permission — composition rights (PRS) and recording rights (PPL) — into one bill administered jointly. You can read exactly what it includes at pplprs.co.uk.
Do you actually need one?
For a typical cafe, yes. Playing recorded music where customers can hear it is a "public performance" under UK copyright law, and that triggers the licensing requirement — whether the source is radio, a streaming app, a CD, a TV, or a dedicated background system. A back-office radio that only staff can hear is a greyer area worth confirming with PPL PRS directly rather than assuming either way.
The costliest misunderstanding is the personal-streaming one. A consumer Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, or YouTube subscription does not cover business use — Spotify's own support material is explicit that personal accounts are for private, non-commercial listening. Your subscription pays the streaming service; it does not buy the public-performance rights PPL and PRS administer. Two things follow. A consumer account never replaces TheMusicLicence, even if every track is "paid for" in your app. And using one for customer-facing playback can breach that service's own terms, separately from the licensing gap. The clean setup keeps the two jobs apart: a music source built and licensed for business, plus the correct public-performance licence.
If you think a narrow exception might apply to your setup — some very specific live TV or radio situations exist — confirm it directly with PPL PRS rather than guessing, because they are easy to get wrong.
What a cafe music licence costs in 2026
There is no single flat price, but PPL PRS does publish worked examples, which is more useful than the vague "it depends" most guides give you. As of January 2026 its restaurants-and-cafés page prices background music for a venue of up to 30 seats in 400 m² or less at £400.81 + VAT a year — about £1.10 a day. The fee is annual, paid upfront, and rises with your audible floor area, seat count, the devices you use, staff numbers, and opening hours.
So a small independent espresso bar and a large multi-room cafe-bar pay very different amounts, and the tariffs are adjusted for inflation each year — treat that £400.81 as a reference point for one specific venue shape, not your bill. Get the exact figure for your premises from the music licence cost calculator at pplprs.co.uk. Two practical notes worth banking:
Pricing is per premises, so multiple sites usually mean multiple fees.
Getting licensed proactively is cheaper than being contacted afterward — a business caught playing music before it holds a licence is typically charged its first year at the standard rate plus a 50% surcharge.
The alternative: catalogue-scoped and royalty-free services
A second route uses a provider's directly licensed catalogue instead of mainstream repertoire. Some providers position their own music outside performing-rights-society repertoire, so no PRO blanket licence is required for that catalogue playback. That does not settle every rights layer in every market: neighbouring-rights treatment must be confirmed for the country and use case. The provider's scope applies only to its own music, never to anything else you also play.
It helps to see the market as two camps. Mainstream-catalogue platforms (Soundtrack Your Brand, and consumer apps generally) give you recognisable chart music but tell you plainly that public-performance rights still apply. Directly licensed catalogues trade the Top 40 for a provider-defined catalogue and documented scope. Check each provider's terms, certificate and market position rather than treating “royalty-free” or “AI-generated” as a legal conclusion. Background Sounds, for example, publishes £150 + VAT a year or £15 + VAT a month for its royalty-free subscription.
Neither camp is "better" in the abstract: it depends on whether you need chart familiarity or a provider-defined catalogue with documented business-playback scope. Whichever you pick, read the provider's certificate or licensing page, confirm local obligations and keep a copy. The provider's scope never stretches to a Spotify playlist, radio, DJ or live music used alongside it. You can line the options up on /compare/uk.
Where Sonosfera fits
Sonosfera is a background-music service built for rooms like cafes, where the goal is a calm, consistent atmosphere rather than the Top 40. Sonosfera catalogue tracks are directly licensed by Sonosfera and positioned outside performing-rights-society repertoire, so no PRO blanket licence is required for Sonosfera catalogue playback. Neighbouring-rights treatment is confirmed per market.
The boundary matters: that position covers Sonosfera catalogue playback only. It does not cover a Spotify playlist, radio, TV, DJ set, live music, uploads or third-party tracks; each carries its own rules. Confirm the obligations for the actual sources and market you use. You can review country-aware pricing and compare it against the alternatives above.
Keep scheduling as a separate operating plan
Licensing tells you whether the source and public playback are covered; it does not design the trading-day schedule. Use the dedicated café music schedule for a flexible opening-to-close template, room checks and staff handover. Keeping that plan separate prevents operational advice from obscuring the dated licensing evidence on this page.
Your cafe music checklist
Run this before you open a new site or change your setup:
Confirm whether you need TheMusicLicence — most customer-facing cafes do if customers can hear recorded music — and get it from PPL PRS.
Check your exact tariff on the official pages before budgeting; don't rely on a figure from a blog.
Stop using any personal Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube account for customer-facing playback.
Move to a music source that is licensed for business use.
Set a simple per-moment volume habit so staff can run it without you.
Keep your licence paperwork and any provider certificate on file, in case PPL PRS ever asks what you play.
A few remaining questions
What is the actual difference between PPL and PRS?
PPL collects for the recording — the record label and the performers on the specific track you press play on. PRS for Music collects for the people who wrote the song: composers, songwriters, and publishers. A single public performance can engage both rights at once, which is exactly why the UK now bundles them into one TheMusicLicence rather than billing you twice. You deal with PPL PRS Ltd, their 2018 joint venture, for both.
Does a back-office radio only staff can hear need a licence?
It is a grey area rather than a clear yes. A cafe dining room where customers can hear music is unambiguously a public performance; a radio playing solely to staff in a back room is less clear-cut and turns on the specific circumstances. Rather than assume in either direction, describe your exact setup to PPL PRS and get their position before you rely on it — the cost of asking is nothing.
If I open a second cafe, does one licence cover both?
No. TheMusicLicence is priced per premises, so a second site normally means a second fee, calculated on that venue's own floor area, seating, and usage. The same logic applies to a catalogue subscription such as Sonosfera or a royalty-free provider — check whether the plan is per location. Budget each new site separately rather than assuming your existing licence stretches to cover it.
Confirm your licence position on the official PPL PRS pages and keep the evidence for the source you actually use. Then use the café music schedule guide for the separate operating plan. If you would rather not build and licence a catalogue yourself, music for cafes is the cafe-specific starting point, with country-aware pricing you can weigh against the figures above.
