Treatment Room Renters: Who Pays the Music Licence?
You sign the lease for a beautiful new treatment room. You set up your massage table, light a candle, and connect your phone to a Bluetooth speaker to play a relaxing Spotify playlist.
You assume the clinic owner has the music licence sorted. They assume you have your own.
If an inspector visits, only one of you is getting the fine.
The UK wellness and beauty industry runs on rented spaces. Therapists, aestheticians, and massage practitioners often operate as independent businesses within a larger clinic. This creates a massive legal grey area regarding the treatment room rental music licence.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. PPL PRS does not care about your verbal agreements. They care about who is authorising the "public performance" of copyrighted music.
If you are playing Spotify from your personal device in your rented space, you are the one breaking the law. Spotify's terms explicitly prohibit commercial use. And if you lack a PPL PRS licence, you are liable for fines that can be backdated up to six years.
Who pays the music licence: renter or landlord?
The answer depends entirely on who provides the music and how it is broadcast. Let us look at the two main setups in UK clinics.
Setup 1: The landlord provides central music If the clinic owner pipes ambient music through ceiling speakers into your treatment room, and you have no control over it, the landlord is responsible for TheMusicLicence. They are the ones broadcasting it. You are simply renting a room that happens to have music playing in it.
Setup 2: You provide your own music If you bring a smart speaker, a laptop, or a radio into your rented room and choose the playlist, you are responsible. You are operating as a self-employed therapist running an independent business. The clinic owner's overarching building licence usually does not cover independent contractors operating their own audio equipment.
We covered a similar situation in our breakdown of chair rental in hair salons. The principle remains the same for beauty and wellness rooms.
"Assuming your landlord's music licence covers your portable Bluetooth speaker is the fastest way to a £335 unexpected bill. If you control the playlist, you carry the liability."
Why do I need two separate licences anyway?
PPL and PRS are two different organisations. PRS collects money for the songwriters and composers. PPL collects money for the record labels and performing artists.
If you play a recorded track during a facial, you are using the intellectual property of both groups. To do this legally, you must buy TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS Ltd, which bundles both fees together. You can read our full breakdown of .
