How did we solve music playback in our store?

When we were thinking about how to differentiate our store, one of the things was music. We wanted to have music in the background that wasn't regurgitated from the radio hundreds of times, but at the same time people (and us) would like. At first we thought about a non-traditional playlist from Spotify or YouTube Music. And since I've written books (and not just) about the controls entrepreneurs are facing, I knew we needed to think about royalties. As I wrote...

If you place a radio or TV in a premises where your customers can also listen to it, you also incur a royalty. And that's where the Copyright Office comes in.

Now watch out!

Owners often think that because they pay for their music on Spotify, YouTube, Apple or something similar, they are not subject to the fees. Unfortunately, the opposite is true:

According to the licensing terms, you can only stream music from these services for personal use. Commercial use, such as playing it in a store or restaurant, is prohibited. Not to mention illegally downloaded music. So if you want to stream music to customers from your Spotify account, for example, you can't avoid the OSA licence fee - regardless of whether you have a free or premium (paid) version of this online service.

So I do the math on the OSA website and I'm knee-deep in fees - they want twenty-five EUR a month (plus the cost of Spotify/Youtube)! That seems like a crazy price for our small shop. Fortunately, I know there is music out there that doesn't have to pay licensing fees.

A few years ago the choice was quite limited, but now the market is elsewhere. In the end, out of all the options, we chose Jamendo In-store radio. The price is absolutely great - for shops up to 50 m2 it is about 5 EUR per month. And the price includes everything: music, "license" and mobile app for playing. Stores up to 100 m2 cost 8 EUR. And for 14 days you can try it for free. Perfect!

What's it look like in our store now?

We have a JBL Charge speaker in the store (a smaller version Flip would be enough), it is permanently plugged into a wall socket, an app is installed on the phone in the store (for Android, there is also one for Apple) and the phone is paired with the speaker via Bluetooth. Of the 27 different genres Jamendo offers, we use about 10 of them. And of course, I mustn't forget the certificate that confirms that the music played is not covered by copyright organizations anywhere in the world; we have this printed for possible inspection.

And the main thing is that people and we like the selected music very much, because we have all unusual and cool artists playing. We've already added some of them to our personal playlists.

And what about you, do you perceive music when shopping? Is it important to you? How do you deal with it in your own establishment? We'd love your insights.