Can I play Spotify in my store?

The question comes up in every store I talk to, usually in a lowered voice, because the owner already suspects the answer. Here it is without the suspense. Spotify's terms of use grant you "limited, non-exclusive, revocable permission to make personal, non-commercial use of the Spotify Service." Their support page drops the legalese entirely: "Spotify is only for personal, non-commercial use. This means you can't broadcast or play Spotify publicly from a business, such as bars, restaurants, schools, stores, salons, dance studios, radio stations, etc."

Apple Music and YouTube Music say the same thing in their own terms. Personal use, non-commercial. There is no consumer streaming service that comes with the right to fill a room of customers.

Why a paid subscription doesn't cover a store

A store playing music to customers is what copyright law calls a public performance, and the right to perform a song publicly belongs to the songwriter and publisher. In the US, four organizations license that right on their behalf: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR. Your Spotify subscription pays for none of it. It buys you the private listening rights, which end at your own ears.

So a consumer account in a store creates two separate problems at once. The first is copyright: performing songs publicly without a license from the people who own them. Courts can award between $750 and $30,000 per song for that, and up to $150,000 per song when the infringement is willful. Those are civil damages, awarded per work, which is why the letters PROs send to businesses tend to concentrate the mind. The second problem is contract: you agreed to Spotify's terms, and business playback breaks them, which means the account itself can be revoked. Getting a PRO license fixes the first problem and leaves the second one standing. Spotify's terms still say personal use only, licensed room or not.

What being legal actually costs

Less than the fear suggests. Two routes.

The bundled route: business streaming services exist to make this a subscription problem. Soundtrack starts at $29 a month per zone. SiriusXM Music for Business is $26.95 a month and their licensing page names all four PROs as included. Pandora's CloudCover is $18.95 a month per location. Mood Media prices by quote. Every one of them handles the performance licensing so you never talk to a PRO. Spotify themselves, when they tell you no, point you to Soundtrack.

The direct route: license the PROs yourself and play music you otherwise have the right to play. At 2026 rates, ASCAP's retail license starts at $324 a year for up to three speakers, and BMI's starts at $311.71 a year for a store under 2,000 square feet. SESAC and GMR price by quote. Four separate agreements to cover the catalogs most stores draw from, and the total for a small store still lands under a thousand a year.

One narrow carve-out exists for radio. A store under 2,000 square feet can play an FCC-licensed radio or TV broadcast over a limited speaker setup without any license at all. That exemption covers broadcast radio, received in smaller premises, and stops there. Playlists, CDs, and streaming services sit outside it. I cover the whole licensing question, including that exemption, in do I need a license to play music in my business.

The question behind the question

Most owners treat this as a compliance chore, pay the subscription, and go back to whatever playlist the afternoon shift likes. Which means they solve the legal problem and skip the interesting one. Once you're paying to be legal, the music is a chosen input, and forty years of research says that input moves how long people stay, what they reach for, and what the room feels like it should cost. That part is what I study, and the honest starting point is what music should I actually play in my store.

You're already paying for the music. The license is the cheap part.

I'm a researcher, not a lawyer, and this page describes the US rules as published. For your specific situation, ask an attorney.