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Startle's royalty-free service offers you high quality, carefully curated playlists that come with public performance rights built in.
Background music for business is professionally curated music, chosen and managed specifically for commercial spaces rather than personal listening. It’s selected to match a brand’s identity, the pace of a venue and the mood you want your customers to feel.
Background music for business has to be properly licensed for public use, and for brands with more than one site, it needs a way of staying consistent across all locations.
Royalty-free music is music you can use in content without paying royalties to artists or rights holders every time it's played.
Most commercial music is licensed collectively: for example, in the UK, businesses that play commercial music in public need TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS, a blanket fee based on the type and size of the venue.
Startle's royalty-free music is different, it's directly licensed. The rights are cleared directly with the rights holder, so the music we supply to you is covered without the need for a separate collecting-society licence.
Far more than just businesses. YouTubers and podcasters use it in their videos, and filmmakers, game studios and agencies use it in soundtracks and ads, though these uses need a different kind of licence.
For businesses, royalty-free music solves a specific problem: playing music in public without a separate collecting-society licence. That's why it's popular with shops, restaurants, gyms, hotels and offices. They get one predictable cost covering the music they play.
Plenty of royalty-free libraries are built for YouTubers, podcasters and video editors. Their licences cover the video or the channel, not a physical premises playing music out loud to customers and staff. Play one of those tracks over your sound system and you may not be covered at all.
Check before you assume - “royalty-free” and “licensed for public performance in your premises” are not the same thing. Startle's royalty-free music is directly licensed for business use, so it's covered for exactly that.
Startle's royalty-free music is a directly licensed catalogue; a professionally produced library of original music. It isn't registered with PRS or PPL, and the licence explicitly includes public performance rights.
Covered for playing out loud in your premises.
Delivered and scheduled through Startle Studio.
Curated to match your brand, not a generic stock playlist.
Royalty-free music sometimes gets a reputation for sounding generic. Ours doesn't: it sounds every bit as good as a commercially licensed playlist or streaming service. We have an extensive library of royalty-free music, featuring up and coming artists, or those that have chosen direct relationships, where the artists are paid directly.
Frequently asked questions.
Not necessarily. If a royalty-free catalogue is the only music you play on site, and its licence includes public performance rights, you likely don’t need TheMusicLicence for it. PPL PRS’s own guidance confirms that royalty-free or copyright-free music, used exclusively, is one of the few situations where a separate licence isn’t required.
Then you’ll need TheMusicLicence to cover that separate source. Royalty-free only covers what’s actually royalty-free - mixing sources means mixing what’s required to stay compliant.
No, that’s the trade off. Royalty-free means a curated, original catalogue rather than commercially released hits. If recognisable music matters to your brand, or you use radio or live music, PPL PRS and a traditional professional background music solution is the better fit.