Cafe Music Licence Australia: OneMusic-Aware Checklist
A practical Australian cafe checklist for playing music legally: how OneMusic licensing works, plus a daypart soundtrack plan your staff can actually run.
By Sonosfera Team·Background music for Australian businesses··Updated
Key Takeaways
In Australia, a cafe playing recorded music to customers almost always needs a OneMusic licence, which covers both songwriters (APRA AMCOS) and recording owners (PPCA).
A personal Spotify or Apple Music account does not cover commercial playback, even if you already pay for it.
Build your soundtrack around four service moments first (opening, rush, afternoon, evening), then worry about genre.
Keep your music workflow and your licensing paperwork as two separate jobs so neither blocks the other.
Always confirm current scope and fees directly with OneMusic Australia, because tariffs change year to year.
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.
If you run a cafe in Australia and you play music for customers, two questions usually arrive together: am I allowed to play this, and does it actually make the room feel right? This guide answers both. It is written for independent cafe and coffee-shop owners (and the managers who open up) who want a soundtrack that is legal, easy for staff to run, and genuinely suited to the room — not just a playlist someone left on shuffle.
Direct answer: If your Australian cafe plays copyright-protected music where customers can hear it, OneMusic Australia says you usually need permission or a music licence for that public performance. A personal Spotify, Apple Music or similar account is not enough for commercial playback; sort the OneMusic licence separately, then choose a business-ready soundtrack that matches opening, rush, afternoon and evening service.
Do Australian cafes need a music licence?
Yes, in nearly all cases. In Australia, playing recorded music to the public is a licensed activity, and the body that handles it for hospitality venues is OneMusic Australia. OneMusic is a single licensing service jointly run by APRA AMCOS (which represents songwriters, composers and publishers) and the PPCA (which represents record labels and recording artists). One agreement through OneMusic is designed to cover both rights at once, so you do not have to chase two separate organisations.
A few terms worth defining up front, because they cause most of the confusion:
Public performance — playing music where customers can hear it counts as a public performance, even if the music is "just background." Your home licence does not extend to your shop floor.
A personal streaming subscription is not a commercial licence. Spotify's own public and commercial use guidance states that personal accounts are for personal, non-commercial use only. The same logic applies to a personal Apple Music or YouTube account.
So a paid Spotify Premium account on the counter speaker is not enough on its own. You still need the OneMusic licence for the public-performance side, and ideally a music source intended for business use. For an independent explanation of how Australian copyright treats public performance, the Arts Law Centre of Australia — a national community legal centre for the arts — is a useful neutral reference alongside OneMusic's own pages.
One honest caveat: licence scope and fees depend on your venue type, floor area and how music is used, and OneMusic updates its tariffs. Treat this article as orientation, not a quote. Always confirm the current terms for your specific cafe on the OneMusic site before you budget.
A short history: how OneMusic Australia came to exist
Understanding why there is one body, not several, makes the paperwork far less confusing. For decades, an Australian venue that wanted to play recorded music had to deal with two separate organisations, because Australian law splits music into two rights that are owned by different people:
APRA AMCOS — APRA (the Australasian Performing Right Association) was founded in 1926 to license the composition: the work of songwriters, composers and publishers. It later combined with AMCOS (the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society) to operate as APRA AMCOS, the body that represents the songwriting and publishing side.
PPCA — the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia, established in 1969, licenses the sound recording: the rights held by record labels and recording artists.
For years that meant a single cafe could receive two invoices, fill in two sets of paperwork and field two sets of questions, simply to play the radio. In 2019, APRA AMCOS and the PPCA launched OneMusic Australia as a joint licensing service to merge those two transactions into one. The legal rights did not merge — APRA AMCOS still administers the songwriting side and the PPCA still administers the recording side — but the customer-facing experience became a single agreement, a single fee schedule and a single point of contact. The history matters for a practical reason: if you operated a cafe before 2019, your obligations have not gone away, they have simply been consolidated, and an old "we only ever paid APRA" assumption is now incomplete.
How OneMusic pricing generally works
We are deliberately not quoting dollar figures here, because cafe tariffs change and the right number depends on your setup. What is stable enough to plan around is the shape of it:
OneMusic typically prices hospitality music by factors such as how the music is used and the size or capacity of the space.
A cafe that plays quiet background music is usually treated very differently from a venue with live performance, DJs or dancing. The gap between those bands is large, so the way you use music matters more than most owners expect.
It is an annual licence, so it belongs in your yearly compliance calendar alongside insurance and council registrations.
The practical takeaway: if you keep music to quiet background use and know your patron capacity, you can usually predict roughly which tariff band you fall into before you ever request a quote — even though only OneMusic can give you the dollar figure for your venue.
A daypart soundtrack plan for cafes
Licensing keeps you legal. The soundtrack is what customers actually feel. A common mistake is running one emotional temperature all day — the same playlist at 7am, at the lunch rush, and at 4pm — which serves none of those moments well.
A more reliable approach is to build four daypart blocks before you add any niche genres. Think of each block as a schedule, a volume habit, and a sound, not just a genre list. The tempo and volume figures below are general starting points to tune by ear in your own room, not fixed rules — every space sounds different.
Make the room feel chosen and a little more intimate.
75–95 BPM
Medium
Medium. Jazz tones, mellow lounge, slower sophisticated tracks.
A comfortable background level is roughly the point where two people at a table can talk without raising their voices, and where a customer at the counter never has to repeat an order. Many cafes find the opening hour wants to be noticeably calmer and slower than the rush, and that the single clearest sign a daypart block is wrong for its moment is staff reaching to skip the tracks. If staff are talking over the music to be heard at the till, it is too loud for that moment — resist the urge to push the volume up just because the room is full.
Looking ahead, the part of this we expect to get easier is the manual ear-tuning. As more cafes run scheduled, daypart-aware soundtracks rather than one all-day playlist, the realistic next step is volume and tempo that shift on a timer to match the trading day automatically, so a single barista on shift is not the only thing standing between the room and the right level. The licensing obligation, though, will not change shape: it stays an annual OneMusic agreement regardless of how the playback is automated.
These are starting points, not laws of physics. The honest way to set them is the same way you would adjust the lighting: stand in the room during each service moment, listen, and nudge tempo and volume until the block fits the job it is doing.
How to choose tracks without overthinking it
Use the room itself as your test, shift by shift:
Does the track support conversation, or does it fight it?
Does it match the pace of the current service moment?
Will staff still tolerate it after several shifts, or will they start skipping it?
Does it fit the cafe's brand without becoming the whole personality?
Is the source appropriate for customer-facing, commercial playback?
The genre label matters less than the result. Jazz, acoustic, soul, house, bossa and indie can all work in a cafe; they fail when the energy, the vocal density or the volume is wrong for the moment.
Where Sonosfera fits
Sonosfera is a background-music service built for businesses, so the playback side is intended for commercial use rather than improvised from a personal account. We organise music around exactly the daypart moments above — opening, midday and evening moods — and we keep an Australia cafe music page as the local landing point with previews you can listen to.
Here is the honest fit: Sonosfera handles the playlist-and-ambience job. It does not replace your OneMusic licence for the public-performance rights — those are two separate jobs, and keeping them separate is what keeps you both compliant and sane. If you only need a tidier playlist and you already have your licensing sorted, that is a perfectly valid reason to use us. You can see how the playback service is priced on our pricing page.
Confirm your OneMusic licence requirement and current cost on the OneMusic site.
Stop relying on a personal streaming account for the shop floor.
Build the four daypart blocks before adding niche genres.
Keep volume guidance simple and write it on the wall for staff.
Re-check your licence annually, the same way you renew insurance.
FAQ
Do I need a music licence if I only play quiet background music in my cafe?
Yes. In Australia, playing recorded music where customers can hear it is a public performance regardless of volume, so a OneMusic licence still applies. Quiet background use is usually priced differently from live music or a venue with dancing, but it is not exempt. Confirm your category with OneMusic.
Isn't my paid Spotify or Apple Music account enough?
No. A personal streaming subscription covers personal, non-commercial listening only — Spotify says so in its own terms. You still need the OneMusic licence for the public-performance rights, and you should ideally play from a source that is licensed for business use rather than a consumer account.
What does OneMusic actually cover, and who runs it?
OneMusic Australia is a single licensing service run jointly by APRA AMCOS (songwriters, composers and publishers) and the PPCA (record labels and recording artists). One OneMusic agreement is designed to cover both the composition and the recording rights for your venue, so you deal with one organisation instead of two.
How should I structure a cafe playlist across the day?
Start with four blocks — opening, rush, afternoon and evening — and give each one a clear job: ready, motion, calm, and intimate, in that order. Pick music by energy and vocal density to suit each moment rather than by genre alone, and test it against the room. If customers repeat orders or staff skip tracks, change that daypart block before changing the whole system.
General information, not legal advice. Licensing categories and fees change over time, so confirm your licence category and current fee directly with OneMusic Australia before you go live.
Next steps
Get the legal side confirmed first: check your venue's requirement and current cost on the OneMusic site. Then sort the sound — build your four daypart blocks and test them against the room over a few shifts. When you want a business-ready soundtrack organised around those moments, start with our Australia cafe music page.
