Background music for your clothing shop, without Buma and Sena
RadioMatic gives your clothing shop its own station with the best music every day in the style that fits your brand, and because the music is made entirely by AI no payment is due to Buma/Stemra and Sena.
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 clothing shop?
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
Announcing the new collection In a clothing shop new collections keep coming in and the old stock has to go. With RadioMatic you tell people that on your own station. Between the tracks the DJ moments name your shop and tell people the new collection has arrived, that the second jumper is half price or how late you are open on a shopping Sunday.
No studio or voice actor needed You type it in during the morning and it is there on the next round, in the voice you pick. An announcement like that would otherwise take a studio and a voice actor, and that bill never added up for one or two branches.
No commercials for other brands What is not in it matters just as much. Third-party advertising never comes between the tracks, so the chain two doors along is not advertising in your shop and no commercial plays for a brand you do not sell. If you do want a short bulletin on the hour with local news, the weather and the traffic, that is possible, with subjects you switch on and off yourself. Want an afternoon of music only, then you switch off everything that speaks.
No worn-out list for your sales staff The music is generated rather than pulled from a fixed list. Your customer stands in your shop for twenty minutes and does not notice, but your sales staff stand there for eight hours and would otherwise hear the same forty tracks come round every Thursday. Here new music arrives every day in the same style, and the tracks that do well come back more often. With more branches you run them from one dashboard and every shop still keeps its own mood, offers and opening hours.
What does music in your clothing shop cost in Buma and Sena payments?
Two bills, worked out differently If you play music by human creators, you get two bills. Each one is worked out in a different way. Buma/Stemra looks at your floor. Your clothing shop falls in the shop category, which charges per square metre, in brackets. Within a bracket it makes no difference exactly how big you are. Pass the line and you are in the next one. Sena looks at your staff and counts the people who hear the music. So the two bills have nothing to do with each other.
Stockroom and upper floor count So keep an eye on the stockroom and the upper floor. If the same music from the same source plays there as in the shop, Buma/Stemra adds the floor areas together into one bracket. Put a separate radio on there and you pay for that space separately. At Sena that makes no difference. There everyone who hears the music counts, including the colleague who stands at the back all day.
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 | € 427 |
|---|---|
| Sena, including the RAAP-PPI surcharge | € 181 |
| Together per year | € 608 |
Sources: Buma/Stemra, mechanical background music, binding tariff text BUM.129.26/01, article 7 and article 8, and Sena, 2026 tariff overview, page 8, table Verkoopruimtes I, algemene detailhandel. The category B scale runs by floor area up to 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 m². The Sena scale runs by staff up to 5, 10, 25 and 50. Article 8 of BUM.129 provides that floor areas are added together where the same music from the same source plays in different spaces, and that you pay for each space separately where different music plays. 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.
What music suits your clothing shop?
Music that suits your brand In a clothing shop the music is part of how your brand sounds. A shop selling suits to people of fifty needs a different sound from a shop selling streetwear to sixteen-year-olds. That difference sits mostly in the tempo, in the bass and in how prominent the vocals are. What goes wrong in both cases is a fixed list someone put together once and never touched again. After a few months a shop like that sounds like a shop standing still.
The day has its own course The day has its own course as well. On a Tuesday morning someone walks quietly along the rail and the music is meant to hang in the space without asking for attention. On a Saturday afternoon the place is full, everyone is talking over each other and the volume of the building goes up by itself.
A firmer pulse when busy A slightly firmer pulse works then, or the music disappears between the conversations. With RadioMatic you set that per part of the day and it changes by itself. Nobody behind the till has to think about it.
Calm in the fitting rooms In the fitting rooms something else is going on. Someone stands there alone behind a curtain deciding whether they like something. They hear exactly what is being said outside that curtain. Music that runs evenly there makes that a good deal less awkward than a silence in which every word at the till can be followed. Put a separate zone in there and you set that separately from the same dashboard.
It works on the equipment already in place
Ceiling speakers or a Sonos You do not have to replace anything and you do not have to buy anything. RadioMatic is a stream. If you have a Sonos in the shop, the stream plays on it. If there are ceiling speakers on an amplifier, the usual picture in a shop unit of 120 m², the stream goes into that system through the line-in on that amplifier. A Chromecast on an existing installation works too, and a browser on the PC behind the till is enough to start.
Stockroom or fitting rooms separately If you want something different in the stockroom or in the fitting rooms than in the shop, you put a separate source there and run both from the same dashboard. In a chain, every branch has its own mood 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
Suppliers for retail as a whole Look for music for your clothing shop and you end up with suppliers who serve retail as a whole. Tunify has a Dutch retail page with fashion and accessories as its first category. Retail Radio from Cue Creative works at the top end of the market and makes its own station for large chains.
Two extra bills on top 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 use or in a public setting you need a public performance licence of your own from your copyright organisation. Cue Creative gives advice on music rights at Buma/Stemra and Sena. What those bills cost is set out above.
With RadioMatic your clothing shop sounds calm on a Tuesday morning and, when the place is full on a Saturday afternoon, firmer by itself. By the fitting rooms the music runs evenly, so whoever is behind the curtain does not hear every word at the till. Between the tracks your customer hears that the new collection has arrived or how late you are open on a shopping Sunday.
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 clothing shop
Other kinds of business
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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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