Pandora for Business: Streaming Music in a Commercial Setting

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Pandora is one of the most popular music streaming services available online.

The basic Pandora service is powered by the Music Genome Project, which is considered the most powerful analysis of music undertaken so far. The program gathered information about songs and musical preferences for more than 10 years, linking rhythm, mode, beat, genre, and lyrical preferences, and could recommend songs you may never have heard otherwise. As mobile technology improved, and more people began playing music on their smartphones or similar devices, Pandora’s app was used in more places. The company realized that Pandora commercial accounts might want access to that technology, too, but with licensing requirements, that program must be separate from the original Pandora.

Pandora Music for Business is just what it sounds like and more. As one of the leading music streaming apps for businesses, they offer full compliance with Pandora licensing and copyright, ease of use in creating and managing stations, no Pandora commercials, and no long-term contract requirements. When you sign up for a Pandora business account, you are asked about your favorite songs or artists, and that information will generate a new “station” for you. After you have a station set up, you can refine the songs you hear by liking or disliking them in the Pandora for Business app.

This power allows you to control the kind of music you hear, so you know you will enjoy your station as you refine it more. This approach to creating a musical list can also be appealing for business owners; you can pick a genre you know your patrons will enjoy and let it play. However, there are several downsides to playing Pandora in a business, including potential legal problems.

Pandora Streaming Is Not Optimized for Business

Although playing music through Pandora radio in your restaurant, storefront, or office may seem like a good solution to providing inspiration and soothing sounds to your patrons and employees, there are some reasons this may not be the best solution.

  • The free version of Pandora plays an ad every few songs, so you will likely subject those around you to advertising.
  • Although you can “thumbs down” songs you do not like or that do not fit, this may interrupt the flow of music.
  • There may not be censoring of explicit lyrics or content in the songs, which could offend shoppers or employees.
More important than all of the issues above, playing music stations, like from your personal Pandora account, in a commercial or business setting breaks the law.

Terms of Soundtrack Service and Licensing

We all agree to terms of service when we sign up for online services, but few of us read them in-depth. Pandora’s TOS are clear that using their service in a business, retail, restaurant, or other commercial establishment requires different licensing for the music, which Pandora says must happen through a separate service. You can privately listen to any Pandora station you create, but playing that Pandora retail music station in front of patrons at your business is illegal. This includes playing Pandora stations for restaurants through the service.

This is true whether you have a free or premium personal Pandora account. (The Pandora for Business cost is $26.95 for a monthly subscription. The additional player is $99 one time (plus shipping & taxes), with no service or maintenance fees. It does not matter if you pay a monthly subscription fee to avoid advertising through the personal streaming service; the TOS do not allow you to use music outside of private or personal settings for commercial use. Playing Pandora in a business without the proper license is illegal.

The legal reason behind this has to do with performing rights organizations (PROs) and how they manage licenses for music.

What are the PROs

PROs are music industry organizations that hold and distribute copyrights to songs for different purposes, on behalf of the musicians, composers, artists, and publishers of the works. PROs often have hundreds of thousands of songs in their catalogs, and you can work directly with them to have access to that catalog.

Once you have access to the catalog, it is up to you to figure out how to find and curate music specifically for your business.  With mobile technology evolving almost daily, simply gaining access to one PRO’s catalog can be more complex than working with a music streaming app.

How PROs Manage Licenses for Business

A PRO is an organization within the larger music industry, which manages licenses and royalties for music copyright holders – publishers, composers, musicians, and other artists. PROs collect money through public performance royalties to ensure that artists and rights holders receive appropriate payment for their work. If you hear a popular song in a commercial, for example, the company that made the commercial paid to license that song for a certain amount of time while the commercial is broadcast.

You need specific licenses to play music in your business, even if you stream songs in the background. This is because playing a song before a significant number of people, or if there is the potential for a significant number of people, is considered a public performance even though the music is prerecorded and played through a totally different service. Fortunately, there are several music streaming apps that manage commercial licenses for you. Pandora CloudCover is unique in its boutique-level service to growing companies, but the general focus of all music streaming providers is to integrate with your business in order to help you manage the atmosphere of your setting and encourage social sharing with your customers. Music streaming apps are also easy for your employees to use. Personal music streaming services like Pandora have licensed with PROs in specific ways to get access to music you might like. Still, this license does not cover Pandora commercial use unless you have a commercial Pandora account.

Legal Problems With Streaming Pandora in Your Business

If you are caught streaming music in your business that you did not pay a business license for, you may face a lawsuit from the PRO that manages that song’s copyright. You may also face large fines. This means you could face a payment of $750 minimum or as much as $150,000 per violation. If you play from a streaming service, you likely get music from multiple PROs, so you may face legal problems with several of these organizations.

Why might you face these fines? It is legal to play broadcast radio in certain businesses, but that is because radio stations have a decades-long relationship with PROs and advertising to pay for specific kinds of licenses that cover accidental public broadcasting. While Pandora advertises itself as a kind of radio station, you will hear songs you like several times as the algorithm figures out how to relate your tastes through the Music Genome Project. With high repeatability and a different kind of licensing for personal use, simply playing Pandora streaming stations in your business will not work.

You can contact a PRO individually and pay for these licenses yourself; this is very expensive, but exactly what most business owners did. But if you want a wide variety of music, including the most popular songs of a genre, you will likely need to take out licenses with multiple PROs because their catalogues do not overlap.

Instead of paying for all these licenses and trying to juggle which songs you can legally play, music streaming through mobile devices and apps has provided business owners with a great opportunity. You can get the convenience of a streaming service like Pandora Radio for Business, but by working with a commercial music streaming company, you don’t have to worry about licensing with PROs directly. This is an infinitely better practice for any business that wants to avoid copyright infringement.

The Top Alternate Services for Music for Your Business or Commercial Setting

Contacting individual PROs and paying each of them for access to their catalogues worked for decades. But now that most people are used to using streaming services or listening to the radio, this type of music access feels cumbersome.

Fortunately, new companies are growing to offer playlists of music licensed for business use, incorporating the familiarity of streaming service interfaces with access to extensive catalogues through several major PROs.

Here are some of the best music streaming services for business:

1. Pandora CloudCover: We are dedicated to licensing music for businesses and providing it to you, the business owner, through an easy-to-use interface. All plans include licenses for music, both in the United States and Canada.

There are three types of plans, including:

  • Music, which provides profanity-free music in curated playlists for businesses.
  • Manage, which allows you to control the music played in each retail establishment if your business has more than one storefront.
  • Messaging, which allows you to insert in-store messages for your customers between songs or playlists.

Unlike other streaming for business services on the market, Pandora CloudCover is dedicated only to working with businesses. There is no personal or consumer level option, meaning the whole company focuses on music for your business.

Curators work on dedicated playlists based on the type of business you run. You can adjust these if there is a specific song you do not want included anymore or if there are multiple playlists you enjoy and want to combine.

Pandora CloudCover also works with most major PROs, including:

Access to music from these many performing rights organizations means you have the best chance of finding a genre that works well. You can find many playlists that suit your business’s needs and leave your customers feeling satisfied with their time in your store.

Pandora CloudCover also offers the ability to upload your own in-store messaging, which can be interspersed with your playlist choices. Any voice your customers hear in your store will be associated with your brand, not with the radio station.

2. Soundtrack Your Brand: Formerly Spotify Business, this internet platform creates mood-based soundtracks, like playlists, which you can share and play in your business. Since Soundtrack Your Brand stemmed from Spotify, the user interface will feel familiar to employees who listen to curated Spotify playlists on their personal devices.

Millions of tracks are licensed for business use, so you do not need to worry about specific licensing fees. You can also schedule your soundtracks, turn playlists you create into soundtracks, work with any hardware you already use like tablets or computers, and avoid explicit lyrics in compliance with the FCC standards.

Sources

About the Music Genome Project. Pandora.

Can I Play Pandora in My Business? (July 29, 2015). Free Enterprise: The FindLaw Small Business Blog.

Music Licensing 101: What Is a Performing Rights Organization? (September 11, 2015). BandZoogle.

What You Need to Know About Music Licensing for Your Business. (March 12, 2013). Entrepreneur.

Leading-Edge Law: Don’t Open Pandora at Your Business. (March 5, 2012). Richmond Times-Dispatch.

7 Licensing Questions on Playing Legal Music in Your Business. Pandora ColudCover.

Homepage. Pandora CloudCover.

Homepage. Soundtrack Your Brand.

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