Music Licence Fines in England and Wales: What Businesses Actually Pay and How to Stay Covered

Music licence fines in England and Wales: what businesses actually pay

By Sonosfera Team

Search for what happens if you play music without a licence and you will be told, on page after page, that UK businesses face fines of "up to £5,000", and sometimes that one pub was hit for "£19,000". Almost none of those pages cite anything.

We went and looked. The £5,000 figure is real, in the sense that it exists in a statute — but it is the cap on a criminal fine, in England and Wales that cap stopped applying on 12 March 2015, and the offence it belongs to was never what PPL or PRS do to a business anyway. The £19,000 is traceable to a single 2015 trade-press report about a bar that breached a court injunction, and it was £4,000 of damages plus £15,000 of costs, not a fine.

What follows is what the published record actually says: named cases, citations, dates, and the sums stated in the judgments. Where we could not clear a figure to two independent sources, we say so and leave it out.

First, the thing that matters most: it is not a fine

Playing recorded music where customers or staff can hear it is a "public performance" under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Section 16(1)(c) makes performing, showing or playing a work in public an act restricted by copyright, and section 16(2) catches not only the person who does it but anyone who authorises another to do it. Section 19 splits it between the composition (the PRS side) and the sound recording (the PPL side).

The remedy is set out in section 96: infringement "is actionable by the copyright owner", and "all such relief by way of damages, injunctions, accounts or otherwise is available". Section 97(2) lets a court award additional damages having regard to the flagrancy of the infringement and any benefit to the defendant — with no cap written into the statute.

Every word of that is civil. PPL and PRS are private companies enforcing property rights; they sue, they do not fine. Their own language agrees: PPL's Code of Conduct for Licensees (April 2025) says a copyright owner "is entitled to take action to prevent this infringement and obtain compensation for it". The words "fine" and "penalty" do not appear in that framing at all.

A criminal offence does exist. CDPA s.107(3) makes it an offence to cause a work to be played in public "if he knew or had reason to believe that copyright would be infringed". Note that the statute has two limbs, not one: "had reason to believe" sits alongside actual knowledge, so saying you did not know does not by itself dispose of the section. We are not going further than the statutory words here, because how the second limb applies to any particular business is a question for a court and for a solicitor, not for us. What we can say is narrower and factual: we found no published UK criminal prosecution of a business for playing background music without a PPL PRS licence.

Where "up to £5,000" comes from, and why it is out of date

The chain is short and every link is a primary source:

1. CDPA 1988 s.107(3) creates the criminal offence described above.
2. CDPA 1988 s.107(5) sets the penalty on summary conviction at up to three months' imprisonment or "a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale".
3. Level 5 on the standard scale is £5,000 (now restated at Sentencing Act 2020 s.122).
4. LASPO 2012 s.85 provides that offences previously punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding level 5 are punishable "by a fine of any amount". It came into force on 12 March 2015.
5. But only in part of the UK. LASPO s.152(1) provides that "Parts 1 to 3 of this Act extend to England and Wales only", and s.85 sits in Part 3. It also speaks of a magistrates' court, which is an England and Wales court.

So, in England and Wales, "£5,000" is the cash value of a criminal cap that stopped being the maximum in 2015. The level-5 wording is still printed in s.107(5); what changed is that it no longer sets the ceiling. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the position is different, because s.85 does not extend there — we have not established what the current maximum is in either, so we are not stating one. If that matters to you, start at CDPA s.107 and LASPO s.152 and take advice.

Either way the figure is wrong twice over for the reader who searched for it: it is a criminal cap, not a civil one, and in the largest UK jurisdiction it is no longer the maximum — which makes it understate the theoretical criminal exposure while completely misdescribing the civil process almost every business actually faces.

One caveat, stated plainly: reading LASPO s.85 together with the "level 5" wording still sitting in CDPA s.107(5), and with s.152 on extent, is our reading of the statutes plus the commencement order. If that point is load-bearing for you, put it to a solicitor rather than to a blog.

We could not trace how commercial content converged on £5,000 as a civil figure. Level 5 is the only plausible statutory anchor and we present it as the probable origin, not an established one.

What the published judgments actually record

Every row below comes from Find Case Law (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk), the official free judgment archive. Accessed 1 August 2026.

Three things fall out of that table, and none of them is "you will be fined £5,000".

Costs are the exposure, not damages. In Hagan, the additional damages the court awarded for flagrancy under s.97(2) were £2,000. The interim payment on account of costs was £44,587.01 — more than twenty times the additional damages, and several times the compensatory award. That is the shape of the risk: not the penalty, the bill for arriving at it.

Both of those figures appear in the judgment and in an independent case note published by the law firm Gowling WLG on 13 December 2016, which is why they are printed here. One small correction to the secondary source while we are relying on it: Gowling describes the £44,587.01 as "a judgment for costs", where the judgment itself calls it an interim payment on account of costs. The number matches; the characterisation is looser, and the judgment's wording is the one to use.

Three further sums in the same case are withheld. The judgment also records compensatory damages, a further sum awarded jointly, and a 10% Part 36 uplift. We could find no independent source for any of the three: every commentator who covers the case rounds the compensatory figure to "approximately £14,000" or "over £13,000" and none states the uplift at all. Rounding is not corroboration, so under this page's own rule those figures stay out. They are in the judgment, which is linked below, if you want them.

PPL v Hamilton Entertainment [2013] EWHC 3467 (IPEC) shows the same shape — a modest settlement dwarfed by the costs of reaching it — and its figures are withheld on the same ground.

Managers can be personally liable. In CGK Trading the person who booked the DJs was held liable in her own right. In Nightclub (London) the sole director was found in contempt alongside the company. "The company will deal with it" is not a reliable position.

Anyone quoting a £ figure as Ellis's outcome is misreading it. The Court of Appeal made no monetary award in that case. The sums printed in the judgment come from the older cases it cites while deciding the point of principle — which is exactly the kind of detail that gets flattened when a figure is copied from page to page.

The £19,000, traced

It comes from a bar in Muswell Hill, North London, reported on 9 November 2015: £4,000 in damages plus £15,000 in costs, after the licensee breached an injunction PPL had already obtained in January 2014, with a judicial warning about imprisonment for further breach.

Three corrections that every page repeating it gets wrong:

• It was not a fine — £4,000 was civil damages and £15,000 was costs.
• It was not for playing music without a licence — it was for breaching a court order already in force, which is the far end of a multi-year escalation, not what happens when a letter arrives.
• It is not a published judgment. We found no matching case on Find Case Law and the report carries no citation.

So we are recording it as the traceable origin of the claim, on a single trade-press source, and specifically not as an enforcement figure you should plan around.

What actually happens, in order

The published judgments are the last 1% of the story. PPL's own Code of Conduct says legal action is used "only as a last resort", and that businesses will "always" be given "a reasonable opportunity to obtain a licence" first. PPL PRS's help pages describe the escalation: contact by post, email or telephone; referral to an enforcement team or a debt collection agency; in some cases termination of the licence, "which may then lead to legal action for copyright infringement."

PPL PRS's own help pages also state that a business infringing in this way "can be liable to pay for up to six years' prior music use". That is their published position, single-sourced to them, and we have not verified it against the Limitation Act — so treat it as what they say, not as settled law.

And one number that is not published anywhere: how many businesses PPL PRS actually takes to court. PPL publishes Annual Reviews, financial statements and transparency reports going back to 2008, and none of them carries an enforcement count. More striking, a party-name search of Find Case Law returns no judgment at all naming PPL PRS Ltd — the joint venture that has issued TheMusicLicence since 2018 — as a party. The most recent published PPL venue-enforcement judgment is Ellis, December 2018.

That is a negative finding from the official register, and we are wording it carefully: it means no published judgment on Find Case Law, not "PPL PRS has never sued anyone". Cases settle, and settlements are not published.

If a letter has already arrived

Practically, that is the situation most people are in when they search for this. Two things on this site are built for it:

• The music licence letter decoder — pick who contacted you and what kind of contact it was, and it explains what that specific contact means, what your three realistic routes are, and what not to do. It covers 12 markets.
• PPL PRS contacted my business — the longer response walkthrough: the decision tree, a worked example, and which records to keep.

The short version: do not ignore it, do not agree figures on the phone, and do not admit past usage you have not verified. A first letter is the opening of a commercial conversation, not a judgment.

What TheMusicLicence costs, so the comparison is honest

Against £44,587.01 of costs, the licence is the cheap option — and the actual rates are published. For a pub of 400 m² or less playing through a radio, the two societies come to £359.95 a year ex-VAT (PPL's PPLPP210 at £204.19 plus PRS Tariff 'P' at £155.76). Through a streaming service or CD player the PRS row changes and the total is £515.78 ex-VAT. Our UK pub licensing guide gives the band count, the range endpoints, the tariff's own pro-rata rule and two worked pubs you can check, and the gym and fitness guide covers the very different per-class fitness tariffs.

Where Sonosfera fits

You don't need a PPL PRS licence to play Sonosfera. Our catalogue is fully rights-controlled and sits outside PPL and PRS repertoire, so none of the exposure on this page applies to it. Every track you play through Sonosfera is included. If you also play other sources — chart music, radio, TV, DJs, live performers, third-party playlists, a guest's phone — those need their own licence. Paid accounts generate a certificate recording the account, premises and period, and rights documentation is available on request.

The boundary is the important part, and it is the same boundary a court would care about: that covers the Sonosfera catalogue and nothing else. Mainstream chart music, radio, TV, DJs, live performers, third-party playlists and a guest's phone are all separate music sources, and they normally still need TheMusicLicence. Switching also only changes things from the day you switch — it does not settle a licence you genuinely owed for music you already played. Review country-aware pricing and compare the alternatives at /compare/uk.

Frequently asked questions

Can I be fined for playing music without a licence?

Not by PPL or PRS. They are private companies bringing civil claims for damages and injunctions under the CDPA 1988. A criminal offence does exist under s.107(3) — it needs you to have known or had reason to believe you were infringing, so "I didn't know" is not on its own an answer — but it is prosecuted by the state, and we found no published prosecution of a business for background music.

So what is the realistic worst case?

On the published record: an injunction, compensatory damages, additional damages under s.97(2) where the court finds flagrancy, and a costs bill that dwarfs both. In Hagan the additional damages were £2,000 and the interim payment on account of costs was £44,587.01 — the two sums in that case with independent corroboration.

Can they come after me personally rather than the company?

Yes, on the published record. A premises supervisor who booked the acts and a sole director have both been held liable in their own right.

I already pay for Spotify — am I covered?

No. Consumer Spotify, Apple Music and domestic radio subscriptions are licensed for personal listening. Playing them where customers or staff can hear them is a public performance and is licensed separately.

They say I owe six years of back payments. Is that right?

That is PPL PRS's published position on their own help pages. It is not something we have verified against the Limitation Act, and a back-payment demand is a claim rather than proof. Ask, in writing, for the exact periods and the calculation — the letter decoder walks through how.

Sources

All accessed 2026-08-01.

• Phonographic Performance Ltd v Hagan & Ors [2016] EWHC 3076 (IPEC) — Find Case Law, The National Archives.
• "Do IPEC costs caps always apply or can they be exceeded?" — Gowling WLG, 13 December 2016. The independent second source for the two Hagan sums published above.
• Phonographic Performance Ltd v CGK Trading Ltd & Ors [2016] EWHC 2642 (Ch) and PRS for Music's press release on it.
• Phonographic Performance Ltd v Balgun [2018] EWHC 1327 (Ch).
• Phonographic Performance Ltd v Nightclub (London) Ltd [2016] EWHC 892 (Ch).
• Phonographic Performance Ltd v Ellis [2018] EWCA Civ 2812.
• Phonographic Performance Ltd v Hamilton Entertainment Ltd [2013] EWHC 3467 (IPEC) — cited for its pattern only; its sums are withheld here as single-source.
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 s.16, s.19, s.96, s.97, s.107.
• LASPO 2012 s.85 and Sentencing Act 2020 s.122.
• PPL Code of Conduct for Licensees, April 2025 and PPL PRS help pages.
• PPL reports and governance — checked for enforcement statistics; none published.

This page is general information about published UK court decisions and legislation. It is not legal advice. For a live dispute, take advice from a qualified adviser.

Next step

If you have had contact, start with the letter decoder — it takes about a minute and tells you what that specific contact is. If you are deciding what to play going forward, review country-aware pricing against the alternatives at /compare/uk.