Three music permissions a restaurant needs, and the subscription that covers none of them

Most independent restaurants treat this as a single purchase. By the end of an ordinary week the music is in three places. Speakers run a playlist in the dining room. A member of staff films a dish plated to a chart track and posts it to the restaurant's social profile. The same clip is then dropped onto its own website, under "Gallery" or "Our story". Those are not one permission with three outlets. In UK copyright law they engage separate restricted acts, and a personal streaming subscription — often what drives the speakers — licenses none of them.

The statute is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and PPL PRS points at it as the reason permission is needed:

Section 19 catches the dining room. Its extent is marked U.K. on legislation.gov.uk, so it runs UK-wide rather than England alone, and came into force on 1 August 1989. Commencement was not fixed in the Act; section 305(3) reads, "The other provisions of this Act come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may appoint by order made by statutory instrument, and different days may be appointed for different provisions and different purposes." That appointment was made by S.I. 1989/816, whose article 2 opens: "The following provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 shall come into force on 1st August 1989:". The copyright provisions, holding sections 19 and 20, head the list.

Section 19 has two limbs, attaching to different things. Subsection (1) covers the song — composition and lyrics: "The performance of the work in public is an act restricted by the copyright in a literary, dramatic or musical work." Subsection (3) covers the recording: "The playing or showing of the work in public is an act restricted by the copyright in a sound recording, film or broadcast."

One transparency point about that second quotation. legislation.gov.uk renders its closing words with its own editorial marker, as "film [ F1 or broadcast ]", because "or broadcast" was substituted into subsections (2)(b) and (3) with effect from 31 October 2003 by S.I. 2003/2498. The brackets and the F1 are the site's apparatus, not enacted words, and are dropped above. That amended a section already running.

Two rights over one song is why the licensing looks as it does. PPL collects for recordings, PRS for Music for compositions and lyrics, and restaurants no longer approach them separately: "Previously, businesses and organisations had to obtain separate music licences from PPL and PRS for Music. However, we have now come together to form PPL PRS Ltd and launch TheMusicLicence."

Section 20 is the second restricted act, the one an owner has never heard of. Its current text is not the 1988 text. legislation.gov.uk's amendment note records the whole section as replaced: "S. 20 substituted (31.10.2003) by The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (S.I. 2003/2498), reg. 6(1) (with regs. 31-40)". It is marked U.K. in extent and has been in force in this form since 31 October 2003. Because the substitution was wholesale, the section sits inside one editorial bracket, and is quoted below without it.

Subsection (1) creates the act:

Subsection (2) is the definition that reaches a restaurant's own web page:

A guest opening the site at eleven at night and pressing play on a soundtracked clip is accessing it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. That is the making-available limb, a different act in law from the speakers on the wall — the point of the 1988 history. When the Act was passed this right did not exist in its current form. It arrived in 2003, and holding a licence for the first act says nothing about the second.

PPL PRS describes TheMusicLicence in one sentence, worth reading for its verbs:

Play, in a business, through radio, TV, devices and live performance: the description is scoped to the room — and wider than owners expect inside it, because a closed dining room before service counts: "Music that's played outside of a domestic environment is classed as a public performance, even if the music can only be heard by employees in the workplace, canteen or staff areas."

The cost is not published as a figure a restaurant can look up. PPL PRS states that "The cost of a music licence for a particular business or organisation depends on a number of factors, such as the size of the business or organisation and the ways that it uses music. In most cases, both a PPL and PRS for Music tariff will apply to your music licence." Its Help page explains what a quote needs: "So, to calculate your fee, we may need you to provide information such as square meterage, number of employees, or venue capacity." Minimum fees sit underneath the tariffs on both sides, and a figure printed there inside the page's own literal square brackets is not repeated here as a price.

The commonest arrangement in an independent dining room is a personal streaming account paired to the till or a Bluetooth speaker. PPL PRS names it: "Popular streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube, to name a few, are for personal use only. When you agree to their Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) you confirm that you will only use the service for personal use and not in any commercial business setting."

That is a licensor characterising somebody else's contract, so check it. Spotify's Terms of Use, read on 2 September 2026, grant this:

Personal, non-commercial. A restaurant using that account for service is outside the permission granted to it, and that exposure is contractual, running against the platform rather than the rights societies. Nor does a commercial streaming service close the public-performance question. PPL PRS is explicit that the two sit on top of one another: "To play or perform music in a public space or within your business and organisation (including via the use of a commercial streaming platform) you may need TheMusicLicence."

Here an honest article stops short of a clean answer. PRS for Music states that permission is needed for music in content, not only in rooms: "If you play music to your customers, audiences or users — whether in-person or online — you'll most likely need a music licence. UK copyright law states that permission must be granted to use music in public, including playing music in your shop or cafe, using music in live events or performances, and featuring background music in videos, podcasts and apps." The same page lists its own exceptions: no licence may be needed where a copyright exemption applies, where the use falls inside one of its non-charging policies, or where the music is out of copyright or outside its repertoire.

It routes a commercially released track through a separate process with its own approval step:

And it splits the recording side off again, as section 19 splits composition from recording: "It’s also worth noting that if you want to use an original recording, you’ll need separate permission from the recording’s rights owners. For more information on this, head over to PPL’s website."

So a commercial track inside a restaurant's video needs permission on both sides — composition and recording — by enquiry rather than assumption. No page read for this article states, either way, whether TheMusicLicence or a social platform's in-app audio library extends to a video file hosted on the restaurant's own site. Meta's Music Guidelines could not be re-opened at source today, so nothing here is attributed to them; the gap is left where it is. The practical response is to ask the licensor about that use, in writing, before publishing, and to treat silence as a question, not a permission.

The posture behind that first row is published, not rumoured. PPL PRS writes: "Playing or performing music without the appropriate licence could amount to copyright infringement. If we have reason to believe that you are using copyright music without an appropriate licence, then we may collect evidence." It sets out the escalation for unpaid accounts: "If any payments under the licence become overdue, we will contact you by post, email or telephone. If appropriate, we may refer the account to our enforcement team or a debt collection agency. In some cases we may even terminate your licence, which may then lead to legal action for copyright infringement." No named UK judgment or penalty figure appears on those pages, and none is invented here.

Rights clearance belongs to the restaurant, whoever built the site. A website should make its media easy to see, easy to swap and easy to take down the afternoon a question is raised — because the expensive version is a clip nobody can source, on a page nobody recalls publishing. That is the discipline a kitchen already applies to photo rights on a restaurant site and to keeping the picture honest as the plate changes.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant, starting at £19 a month excluding VAT with 0% TableSpark commission. Starter, at £19 a month excluding VAT, carries the media library — photographs and video, reused everywhere — so one clip lives in one place and one removal clears it, and a dish or price changed once updates across every page instantly. Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, adds direct reservations at 0% TableSpark commission with live availability, deposits and reminders. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds online ordering and table QR ordering at 0% TableSpark commission. Editing is unlimited on every plan — one editor, no developer — making a same-day takedown realistic, not a support ticket. Every plan ships the search-readiness work, in TableSpark's own published words:

The boundary is worth stating flatly, because it protects the reader: a music licence is the restaurant's own to hold and produce on request, and no such promise is made here. What the platform removes is the part turning a licensing question into a week of work — hunting for where a video was embedded, editing three pages to pull it, hoping the fourth was found too. The same tidiness pays off in the trader identity details a website has to display and the duties attached to a customer savings scheme. Music is worth having on evidence, in three answers not one.