Business Using Music on Hold

Though radio stations are licensed with BMI to perform the music they broadcast, that agreement does not cover further public performance by those receiving the radio broadcast signal. When radio music is used in music-on-hold, that use is a separate performance under the copyright law.

The fees are based on the number of trunk lines your office has, which is the number of different individual telephones you have with music-on-hold capabilities. In addition, each office would need its own license.

Some providers of customized music-on-hold programming may include music licensing fees in their price. Others offering this service may be creating liabilities for uninformed clients because they utilize unlicensed music for on-hold productions. If you are uncertain, ask your service whether or not they do include the music licensing fees in their price and to put this in writing.

At the same time that you pay your fee after the first contract year, you will submit a report (on a form provided by BMI) indicating the number of telephone trunk lines used to provide music-on-hold during the previous contract year. If necessary, your fee will be adjusted based on this report.

Although, most people buy tapes and CDs thinking they are now their property, there is a distinction in the law between owning a copy of the CD and owning the songs on the CD. There is also a difference between a private performance of copyrighted music and a public performance. Most people recognize that purchasing a CD doesn’t give them the right to make copies of it to give or sell to others. The record company and music publishers retain those rights. Similarly, the music on the CDs and tapes still belongs to the songwriter, composer or music publisher of the work. When you buy a tape or CD the purchase price covers only your private listening use, similar to the “home” use of “home” videos. Once you decide to play these tapes or CDs in your business, it becomes a public performance.

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers have the exclusive right of public performance of their musical works under the U.S. copyright law. Therefore, any public performance requires permission from the copyright owner — or BMI — if it is BMI-affiliated music. With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you can publicly perform all BMI-affiliated music.