Background music for your car wash, without Buma and Sena
RadioMatic gives your car wash its own station for the waiting area and the site, one that can take the noise of the blowers and promotes your own subscriptions between the tracks.
With RadioMatic from € 29.99 per location per month, without Buma and Sena. News and your own announcements with Professional. See all plans
What do you pay now for music in your car wash?
Three questions, and you see what you now spend on Buma/Stemra, Sena and your music service.
How big is your business?
What else you get
Five to ten minutes of listening In few businesses does a customer have as much time to listen as at a car wash. First they sit in the queue for the entrance, then in the waiting area or at the vacuums. That is five to ten minutes in which they have nothing to do but look and listen. You can do something with that.
Tell them about your wash subscription The DJ moments name your car wash and play what you type in yourself. You can tell them what a monthly unlimited wash subscription costs, that the wheel rim programme can be added or that the vacuums are free. You type it in and you hear it on the next round.
No spots for another car wash You need no studio, no voice actor and no separate advertising pillar for that. Third-party advertising never comes in between at RadioMatic. With ordinary radio your customer in the queue can simply hear a spot for the car wash down the road.
New tracks for your staff Your staff hear it all day. Someone stands at the entrance waving cars in or at the exit drying off, in surroundings that are noisy already. A fixed list of three hundred tracks soon gets irritating there. With RadioMatic the music is generated rather than pulled from a list. So the style stays put, and the tracks are new every day. With more locations you run them from a single dashboard with its own mood and offers per site.
At a car wash the Sena bill is the biggest
Open to the public A car wash is open to the public. That is why it falls outside the tariff for work spaces, which applies only to spaces the public does not enter. At Buma/Stemra a car wash belongs in the lower of the two background music categories.
Sena charges like a shopping centre Sena classifies a car wash with the shopping streets and shopping centres. That goes per square metre rather than per employee, but with its own tariff that is a good deal heavier. So for the same site you get two bills of very different size.
Sena is well over double The Sena bill is well over double the Buma/Stemra one, while many business owners budget on the Buma amount alone. A workshop with a handful of mechanics in a hall without public pays a fraction of that between both bills. That is not down to the number of listeners.
Declare only the metres that count As soon as the public is allowed in, the charge is worked out in square metres instead of people. So declare only the floor area where the music can actually be heard. Unsure how the waiting area, the tunnel and the vacuum bay are counted? Then ask in writing and keep the answer.
No fees for AI-made music With RadioMatic no payment is due to Buma/Stemra or Sena, because the music is made entirely with AI. Buma/Stemra itself says that music made entirely by AI, without a creative contribution from a person, does not qualify for copyright or payment. The same applies to Sena.
What the law and the court say Sena can only collect for a recording that has been commercially released, and on that ground Sena lost in court in 2025. The full reasoning is in our legal memorandum.
| Buma/Stemra | € 569 |
|---|---|
| Sena, including the RAAP-PPI surcharge | € 1,581 |
| Together per year | € 2,150 |
Sources: Buma/Stemra, binding tariff text for mechanical background music BUM.129.26/01, article 7 and article 8, the binding tariff text for work spaces BUM.132.26/01, which limits the work spaces tariff BUM.411.26/01 to spaces not accessible to the public, the mechanical background music tariff sheet BUM.413.26/01 and Sena, 2026 tariff overview, page 9, table Winkelstraten / winkelcentra / galerijen / passages / buitenruimtes / tankstations. The category B scale runs by floor area up to 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 m², and the Sena scale follows the same lines. By way of comparison, the work spaces tariff charges by FTE, up to 10, 25, 50, 100 and 200. Amounts per year and base tariff, Buma/Stemra excluding VAT, Sena exempt from VAT and here including the RAAP-PPI surcharge of 26.6%. Details of other providers from their own sites, consulted on 23 September 2026. Also used ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2025:6175.
Music that carries over the blowers
Bass and treble vanish outside Around a car wash it is noisy. Blowers at the end of the tunnel, the pressure washer, vacuums on the forecourt and cars idling while they wait. Music that has to come through that needs emphasis in the mid range and a clear pulse. Deep bass disappears into the open air outside, and the high notes are blown away by the blowers. Soft, thin music you simply do not hear there, even with the amplifier switched on.
Calm in the waiting area The waiting area is the opposite. Your customer sits there indoors, behind glass, looking out at their own car. It is the only spot on the site where it can be calm and where someone sits still for a few minutes. Calmer music at a lower volume works better there.
The moment for your announcement It is also the moment when an announcement about your subscription or your wheel rim programme really lands. With RadioMatic you make those two separate zones, each with its own mood and volume, from the same dashboard.
Think of the neighbours Outside there is something else at play. Speakers on a site carry further than you think, certainly in the evening and certainly with houses nearby. So outside, work with more speakers at a lower volume rather than two horns you have to open up a long way. Per part of the day you can have the volume and the style move along, so that it gets calmer by itself after about seven.
On the installation already there
Your amplifier in the plant room Most car washes already have a sound installation, usually an amplifier in the plant room with weatherproof speakers above the tunnel and at the vacuums, often on a 100-volt system. The RadioMatic stream goes into that system through the line-in on the amplifier and the zones you have now stay as they are. If you have a Sonos or a Chromecast in the waiting area, it plays on that. A browser on a PC or tablet at the till is enough to start.
Waiting area separate from the site If you want to run the waiting area separately from the site, you put a separate source there and operate both from the same dashboard. No engineer comes round and no cables are pulled. With more locations, every site has its own mood and announcements under one account. You hear back within one working day, and after that your station is live in under ten minutes.
What you can choose from today
No supplier for car washes Look for music for your car wash and you will not find a provider with its own page for car washes. You end up with general in-store services. IMPAQT Media supplies tailored music programming and in-store commercials to retail, hospitality and supermarkets. Tunify names car parks and petrol stations in its own sector list.
Two extra bills With both of them you are playing music by human creators. That means two extra bills, from Buma/Stemra and from Sena. Tunify says itself that for commercial or public use you need a public performance licence of your own. What that costs is set out above.
With RadioMatic the site gets music with a clear pulse that carries over the blowers and the vacuums, and the waiting area gets something calmer at a lower volume. While your customer waits for their car, they hear what your monthly subscription costs or that the wheel rim programme can be added. In the evening it gets quieter outside by itself, so the neighbours are not bothered.
Why RadioMatic is something other than a playlist or the radio
A business owner who wants music on the premises usually picks from three things. A playlist from a streaming service, an ordinary radio station, or a royalty-free music package. This is where they differ.
| Playlist | Ordinary radio | Royalty-free | RadioMatic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New music | Fixed list | Yes, but not your choice | Limited catalogue | New every day |
| Music that is yours alone | No | No | No | Yes, your own hits |
| Fits the time of day | Switch it yourself | No | Switch it yourself | Automatic |
| Names your business | No | No | No | Yes |
| Your own offers | No | Only if you buy advertising | No | Yes, with Professional, no studio |
| Local news and weather | No | Yes, the station’s | No | Yes, with Professional, your town |
| Other people’s adverts | No | Yes | No | No |
| Several locations | Set up per location | No | Set up per location | Yes, from one place, each with its own mood |
| Buma/Stemra and Sena | Payable | Payable | See the terms | Not payable |
Frequently asked questions about music in your car wash
Other kinds of business
- Background music for your petrol station, without Buma and SenaPetrol station and shop
- Background music in your workshop, without Buma and SenaCar workshop and garage
- Background music in the car park, without Buma and SenaCar parks
- Background music for your showroom, without Buma and SenaCar showroom and dealership
Background music for business. What is allowed, what does it cost and what are your options?
Ready to hear it for yourself?
Try RadioMatic free for 14 days. Your own station for your business, without Buma/Stemra and Sena, and cancel monthly if you pay monthly.
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