Licensing Music for Meets and Galas and other Events

In order to play royalty music (most commercial music) it is necessary to pay for a license.  For most events this is a license for Background music as it is not part of the main event, however for Artistic Swimming there is a seperate Tariff as it is part of the overall production.  The licensing in the UK is now handled by TheMusicLicense they are very helpful but take a long time to respond to email and you may find phoning them is the easiest approach.

Where your Venue has a license for background music it may be a matter of a small uplift or getting the venue to extend their license for the event.  However where the venue is not licensed (Serco only plays royalty free music and so is not licensed), it is necessary to do the whole license for the event.

There are 2 parts to the license PPL and PRS, these have seperate charges that make it up.

See below the tariffs applied to one-off events/permits. This is for venues where there isn't already a licence in place:

https://pplprs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/O-2024-07-Tariff.pdf

and  

https://pplprs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/PPLPP002-Single-Casual-Events-Oct-24-.pdf

For Synchronised Swimming

https://pplprs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/PPLPP053-Synchronised-swimming.pdf

The cost for the County Championships was around £30 per day (this is rounded) and was based on the number of people the Pool was able to accomodate who would hear the music, (number of people allowed poolside and spectators, this is normally set by the Council for a recreational pool for Health and Safety and can be got from the pool operator).

Good luck and stay legal.

If you have any questions please eMail TheMusicLicense's Customer Support or call 0800 015 6225 (mon-thu 8am-6pm, fri 8am-3pm)