It is one of the most common questions a small business owner asks after opening a cafe, a shop or a gym: can I just plug my phone into the speakers and play Spotify? The answer is not as obvious as it seems, and it is worth taking the time to understand it properly.
What a personal Spotify subscription actually covers
When you subscribe to Spotify as an individual user — whether free with ads or Premium at around €10/month — you are agreeing to Spotify's terms of service, which are designed for personal, non-commercial use. The terms are explicit on this point: the service is intended for listening at home, in your car, on your headphones, in contexts that are not public or commercial.
This is not a surprise or a hidden clause. It is stated clearly in Spotify's terms, and it is consistent with how every major streaming service (Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer) structures its consumer product. Consumer streaming services are not licensed for public performance in commercial venues, and the rates they pay to rights holders reflect that.
Why the distinction exists
The reason is straightforward: playing music to a handful of people at home and playing music to hundreds of customers in a restaurant are two very different things from a rights perspective. The reach is different, the commercial impact is different, and the licensing rates paid to authors and performers are different. Consumer streaming is licensed at one rate; business broadcasting is licensed at another. The two are kept separate so that rights holders are fairly compensated for commercial use.
This is consistent across Europe and the United States. There is nothing unusual or aggressive about the rule — it is simply how music rights work.
What a business can do instead
There are two legitimate paths forward for a business that wants legal background music:
Path 1: A business-specific music service
Spotify itself offers a product called Spotify for Business, and other services exist (Soundtrack Your Brand, Rockbot, and several regional alternatives). These are licensed specifically for commercial use and are the straightforward way to play mainstream chart music legally in a venue.
Path 2: A direct-licensed curated radio service
The other option is to use a service like My Corporate Radio, which provides original, professionally curated radios under the direct licensing framework of EU Directive 2014/26. You don't get current chart hits, but you get something many venues find more valuable for day-to-day operations: five radios curated by real broadcasters, refreshed weekly, with no decisions to make and full licensing already included in the monthly fee.
Which is right for your venue?
If your brand identity depends on playing specific chart songs — a themed bar where a particular playlist is part of the experience, for example — then a commercial streaming service is what you need. For most venues, though, music is background. What matters is that the right mood plays consistently, that staff doesn't have to think about it, and that the sound identity of the place is coherent. For that use case, a curated radio service tends to work better and cost less.
One thing to avoid: doing nothing
The worst option, in legal and practical terms, is to keep using a personal Spotify subscription in a commercial venue and hope for the best. Enforcement may not come often, but when it does, it is not a pleasant experience — and more importantly, the atmosphere of the place suffers every single day from music that was not designed for that purpose.
The good news is that switching to a properly licensed service takes a few minutes. Whether you choose a chart-music option or a curated radio service, you end up with something that is legal, professional, and genuinely better for the business.