Music Licence for Hotels in India: PPL, IPRS and the Rules on Playing Music

This is the licence almost every small hotel forgets. You sort out food, fire and tax, then quietly pipe a playlist through the lobby speakers and assume that's free. It isn't. Playing copyrighted music in a space your guests use is a public performance under the Copyright Act, and it needs a licence — one that rarely appears on the standard licences and registrations checklist until a licensing body's representative walks in. This is a plain-English primer, not legal advice.

Why background music isn't free

When you buy a song or pay for a streaming subscription, you license it for personal listening. The moment that music plays in a commercial setting where guests can hear it — your restaurant, gym, pool deck, or a wedding in your banquet hall — the law treats it as a public performance, which is a separate right the copyright owners are entitled to be paid for. “I bought the track” and “it's only in the background” are the two most common misunderstandings, and neither holds up.

PPL and IPRS: two different rights

Here is the part that confuses everyone. A single recorded song carries two distinct sets of rights, managed by different bodies:

• IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society) represents the authors and composers — the underlying musical work: the composition and the lyrics.
• PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) and similar organisations represent the sound recording — the specific recorded track a label produced.

Play a recording in public and you can trigger both at once, which is why hotels frequently need cover from more than one body rather than a single tidy licence. The names and the roster of who represents what have shifted over the years, so confirm which bodies currently cover your repertoire before you pay anyone.

What it costs

Music licence fees are typically tariff-based: the licensing body publishes rates by the type and size of the space, and by whether it's routine background music or a special event. Piped music in a small restaurant is a modest annual fee; a ticketed New Year's Eve party with amplified or live music is in a different bracket entirely.

Example calculation (illustrative assumptions, not an industry statistic): if year-round background music across your public areas costs a few thousand rupees a year, that's a rounding error against the atmosphere it creates — and atmosphere is precisely how boutique hotels compete on experience. The expensive mistake is skipping the licence and getting a legal notice, not paying the tariff.

Where hotels trip up

• Assuming a streaming subscription covers you. Consumer streaming terms explicitly exclude commercial or public playback.
• Licensing one right, not both. Paying only the sound-recording body while ignoring the composers' body (or vice versa) can still leave you exposed.
• Forgetting events. Weddings and parties in your banqueting space often need their own event cover on top of your routine licence.
• Letting it lapse. These are usually annual and quietly expire.

The takeaway

If music plays where guests can hear it, someone owns the rights to it and is owed a fee — buying the song doesn't change that. Work out which licensing bodies cover the music you play, take the right cover for both the composition and the recording, and add event permits when you host functions. It's a small, predictable cost that removes a genuine legal risk and lets you shape the guest experience with a clear conscience — the kind of detail a well-run, owner-led hotel gets right without being told twice. Sort it alongside the rest of the paperwork when you're setting up a hotel in India.