What is retail radio or in-store radio, and what does it cost?

What is the difference between in-store radio and background music?

Background music is only music. In-store radio adds voices: this week’s offer, late-night shopping, the loyalty card, an announcement that the tills close in ten minutes. It sounds like radio, but everything that is said is about your shop.

With an ordinary radio station you do not decide what plays. With in-store radio you do, and where. If one branch has a clearance sale, only the customers there hear those messages. If one shop stays open until nine on Thursdays, only that shop says so.

The Dutch word bedrijfsradio, company radio, is used for two things. Sometimes it means the same as in-store radio. Sometimes it means radio for staff, in a workshop, warehouse or canteen. That also counts as playing music in the legal sense. According to Mijnlicentie (in Dutch), a licence is needed as soon as music in a non-public space can be heard by three or more employees, and always in a public space, radio included. There is more on that under radio in the workplace.

How have chains traditionally arranged in-store radio?

The music comes from a background music provider. The messages are made separately. Someone writes a script, a voice actor records it, and the file is scheduled between the music at set times or per part of the day.

Mood Media describes that process on its Dutch site. Their copywriters write the script, voice actors and sound designers record it, and you approve it in an online portal. They literally call the combination with music "your own branded radio station". Their page on audio messaging now also says they use AI to create content for all locations.

Stingray Business, which has an office in Hilversum, lets you upload pre-recorded messages and place them between the music. Kollekt.FM supplies music with its own curator and a player that connects to your existing system.

That works, but with recorded messages every new script is a new recording. An offer that starts tomorrow, or an announcement for a single branch, fits it less well than a fixed campaign for the whole chain.

Should you go bespoke or ready-made?

There are roughly two ways to get a station of your own. The first is bespoke. An agency maps your brand and your customers, puts together a music format, has jingles and commercials made in a studio and sets the station up for you. That usually means a one-off set-up fee and then a fixed monthly amount, on quotation.

The second is a station you set up yourself on a platform, with fixed prices per location. You enter your business, your mood and your opening hours, and change messages whenever you need to.

Which one fits depends on how much you want to hand off and how often you want to change things. Bespoke gives a polished sound, but every change becomes a job. With a ready-made station a new promotion is a line of text you enter yourself. With both, the question remains whether the Buma/Stemra and Sena levies are included in the price.

What does in-store radio cost?

You pay for three things: the subscription for music and scheduling, the production of the messages, and the payment to Buma/Stemra and Sena. The Dutch sites of Mood Media, Stingray and Kollekt.FM list no prices for music or messages. That is by quotation. What Mood Media does publish is on What does Mood Media cost?

You arrange the levies yourself. Kollekt.FM says so plainly on its licensing page. The business owner applies for the public performance licence directly with the collecting societies in their own country. In the Netherlands those are Buma/Stemra and Sena.

For a shop of up to 200 m² with no more than five staff, those levies come to € 608 a year combined in 2026, per branch, base rate. If you have twenty branches, that is over € 12,000 a year, before the subscription and the recordings. The tariffs per sector and floor area are on music licence costs. The calculator below works out your own situation.

What should you ask a provider?

Ask whether the payment to Buma/Stemra and Sena is included in the price, and get the answer in writing. With music by human makers the answer is almost always no. If you do not ask, you end up comparing two quotes that are not the same thing.

Ask how long it takes before a new message is on air, what an extra recording costs, and whether you can schedule different messages per branch. And ask whether it plays on your existing sound system or needs a player of its own. Which equipment you need is covered in which music system you need.