Can I hand-pick songs and create my own playlist?

Our app does not provide a classic search function to select songs one by one and create a playlist, as you may be used to when using consumer music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music or Deezer (which by the way cannot be legally used in a business location).

Why?

It is a legal and royalty related thing, and at the end a financial reason. It will in fact cost far too much royalty fees to Soundsuit, as a B2B music provider, to allow our business users (i.e you) to pick songs, and play them – on demand – as many times as they want in front of a large audience of customers in their commercial establishment or facility. In this case, record labels and artists, and the PROs (Performing Rights Organisations) representing them (e.g. PRS-PPL, SACEM, GEMA, SESAC, etc.) will classify this use of music in a public space as “on-demand, with high interactivity, forefront music” and not any longer “not-on-demand, with low interactivity, background music“.

What’s the difference?

The difference is huge legally speaking. If a song is played on-demand by a business owner, and play as many times as he wants to his customers, the royalties to pay to the artists are extraordinary high. You – as a business owner – are considered as a kind of brand (e.g. Volkswagen, L'Oréal or Apple) using one song repetitively for your commercial purposes. It’s a bit like using a known song in a commercial on tv (e.g. Microsoft‘s tv ad using “Start it up” from The Rolling Stones). The royalty fees to do this are very expensive. On the contrary, if you use known artists and songs, but in the background, as a music atmosphere for your business, without being in full control of the songs, and expressing constant on-demand song specific request, then the royalty fees applied are very different. They are legally not the same, and they are financially not as high.

What all Music Services for Business have in common?

All background music services for businesses rely on the “not on demand, not highly interactive, background music” copyright model: Soundsuit, Cloudcover Music, Rockbot, etc. Following this model qualifies Soundsuit for instance to pay high but fair royalties to artists, while keeping the price of our service affordable for businesses of all size and sectors. If we were to offer a fully interactive on-demand music platform for business owners to play known artists and songs to large audience of consumers in commercial locations, the royalty fees we would have to pay as a music provider would be so high that we would have to offer our service at a very high price, so high that no business would consider buying our product. It’s as simple as this.