The playlist humming through your café is somebody's property — twice over. The recording belongs to a label; the underlying song to composers and lyricists. Playing music 'in public' (which your dining room legally is) requires licences from the bodies representing those owners, and their enforcement teams visit hospitality venues with notices that turn a ₹15,000 annual licence into a ₹5 lakh legal dispute. Here is the Indian music-licensing map for food and hospitality businesses.
Who collects what
- IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society): the registered copyright society for the musical and literary work — composers', lyricists' and publishers' rights. Playing songs publicly, live or recorded, engages IPRS
- PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd): licenses the sound recordings of its member labels for public performance
- Novex Communications: separately controls public-performance rights of certain labels (notably some major Bollywood catalogues) as an owner's agent
- Practical upshot: a venue playing mainstream recorded Indian music typically needs IPRS plus PPL/Novex coverage depending on catalogue
Yes, the multiplicity is annoying; it reflects genuinely different rights in the same three-minute song.
What triggers the requirement
Any communication of music 'to the public' in a commercial establishment: background playlists in the dining area, TV music channels on your screens, DJs, live bands and cover artists (that's squarely IPRS territory — the composition is being performed), and events (New Year's parties are enforcement season — special-event tariffs exist precisely for them). Personal streaming subscriptions do not cover commercial premises: Spotify/YouTube personal accounts are licensed for private listening, and playing them in your restaurant is unlicensed public performance regardless of what you pay monthly.
Tariffs: what it actually costs
- Published tariff schedules run on venue type, city class, capacity/area and usage (background vs DJ vs live)
- Small café background-music licences start in the low tens of thousands annually; bars, larger restaurants and event-heavy venues scale up
- One-off event licences (weddings, parties at your venue) are priced per event — venues hosting others' events should contract who procures them
- Registered societies' tariffs are publicly posted and negotiable at the margins for chains/associations
Notices cluster around December–January (event season) and follow tip-offs and social media (your own reels of Saturday's DJ night are evidence). Infringement exposure under the Copyright Act includes damages and — technically — criminal provisions, which is why settlement letters read scary. A current licence certificate ends the conversation at the door.
Your compliance options, cheapest to safest
(1) Licensed silence/royalty-free: subscription services selling commercially-licensed background music for venues — legitimate and increasingly good; keep the licence agreement on file and staff off personal playlists. (2) Background-only licensing: IPRS + PPL/Novex at background tariffs for recorded mainstream music. (3) Full-stack: add live/DJ/event coverage as your programming demands. Decide by programming reality — a venue whose brand runs on Bollywood nights should simply budget the full stack as a cost of that positioning; a quiet café can thrive on option 1. Whichever route: certificates displayed/filed, renewals calendared, and event organisers' licence obligations written into your banquet contracts.
How Aidwish helps
Aidwish includes music licensing in its hospitality compliance packs — mapping your programming to required licences, procuring IPRS/PPL/Novex coverage at correct tariffs, and building the event-contract clauses that keep third-party parties from becoming your infringement.