Music for your gym, without Buma and Sena
If you are looking for music for your gym, RadioMatic gives you your own station that moves per part of the day with whoever is on the floor. Because the music is generated 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 gym?
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
Different music morning and evening The morning group is not the evening group. Between seven and ten the floor is quieter and the members are older. Between six and nine in the evening the weights area is full and the crowd is younger. Even so, many gyms run the same station or the same list all day, because there is nobody to switch it over in between. With RadioMatic you set what plays per part of the day, and after that it runs by itself. You pick the style and the tempo, the station fills in the tracks.
Class timetable and taster class announced Between the tracks the DJ moments name your club and play what you type in. For instance this week’s class timetable, that the taster class is on Saturday, that there is still room at personal training or that the changing room on the left is closed for maintenance. Normally you would need a recorded voice track or a studio for that. Here you type it in and you hear it on the next round, in the voice you pick. Want music only, then you switch the voices off.
No offers from other chains No advertising from others comes in between either. Play a commercial station and your member hears the offer from another chain, or from the gym in the same town, every half hour. That does not happen here. With more locations you run everything from a single dashboard, with its own mood, timetable and announcements for each club. A news round on the hour with the weather alongside is something you can switch on or leave out.
What does music in your gym cost, and which square metres count?
Lower category, still two bills Buma/Stemra places a gym in the lower of the two categories of the tariff for mechanical background music. That is not an assumption. The closed list in the binding tariff text names sports spaces without a hospitality facility in so many words. There you pay per square metre, in brackets. Sena has its own table for this sector, also per square metre and with the same bracket boundaries. One room, the same basis, and still two separate bills.
Declare every sports space The question then is which square metres you declare. Sena writes alongside that table that it concerns all the spaces where sport takes place, taken together. So the rooms with foreground music too, and not only the gym floor. Declare the weights room alone and you are declaring too little. On top of that the classification changes as soon as a canteen or bar is added.
Bar and group classes are extra Both organisations start from sports spaces without a hospitality facility, and a separate hospitality space falls under the hospitality tariff. A small bar at the entrance is therefore not automatically inside the amount above. And for foreground music at group classes both of them charge separately again.
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 | € 711 |
|---|---|
| Sena, including the RAAP-PPI surcharge | € 1,113 |
| Together per year | € 1,824 |
Sources: Buma/Stemra, mechanical background music tariff sheet BUM.413.26/01, category B, the binding tariff text BUM.129.26/01 article 7, whose closed list names “sportruimten zonder horecavoorziening” (sports spaces without a hospitality facility), Buma/Stemra on fitness centres and gyms, and Sena, 2026 tariff overview, page 12, table Sportscholen / fitnesscentra. Both scales run by floor area up to 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 m². The notes to the Sena table provide that you declare the total of all sports spaces, those with foreground and those with background music, and that the hospitality tariff on page 4 applies to a separate hospitality space. The surcharge for foreground music at group activities is in a separate table on page 13 and is not in the amounts above. 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 works in a gym?
Tempo stands out first In a gym the music is louder than in almost any other business, so every choice can be heard. Tempo is the first thing that stands out. A slow track between two fast ones is noticed at once in the weights area. On the cardio floor people match their own rhythm to what comes out of the speakers. With RadioMatic you fix a style and a tempo range per part of the day. That stays put, and new music arrives every day.
Weights, cardio and changing rooms apart The floor is not one space either. In the weights area it can be heavier and more direct. On cardio it runs on longer and more evenly. In the changing rooms and at reception you do not want a thump, just something that fills the silence. A stretch or functional corner sits somewhere between the two. You set that per zone and run it from a single dashboard. That saves the argument at the desk about who gets to touch the knob.
No worn-out list for regular members A gym also runs into a worn-out list sooner than other businesses. Your members come two or three times a week, often at the same hour, and that for months on end. A list of five hundred tracks has come round within a few weeks then. Your staff stand in it longer still. Because RadioMatic’s music is generated rather than pulled from a list, the style stays the same and new music arrives every day. Your best tracks come back more often, as your own hits.
It works on your existing installation
Through your PA or 100-volt system You do not have to replace anything. RadioMatic is a stream and it comes in on what you use now. In most gyms there is a PA or a 100-volt system with speakers through the hall and sometimes a separate amplifier per zone. The stream goes into that through the line-in, and the zones you have stay as they are. Sonos, Chromecast or a browser on the computer at reception work just as well. No new hardware is needed and no engineer has to come out.
Weights and cardio, one source each If you want something different in the weights area than on cardio, you put a separate source in each zone and run both from the same dashboard. With several clubs each location keeps 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
Plenty of choice for gyms Look for music for your gym and there is plenty of choice. Tunify, Synerplay and Backsound each have a page of their own for gyms. Trend Music and Groevy aim at the same floor with a fitness page.
Two extra licences, every time And with all of them you are playing music by human creators. That means two extra bills, from Buma/Stemra and from Sena. Tunify says itself that if you play music for commercial purposes or in a public environment you need a public performance licence of your own from your local copyright organisation. Trend Music puts “Licentie via Buma/Stemra en Sena” (licence through Buma/Stemra and Sena) next to it. What those licences cost is set out above.
With RadioMatic the weights floor gets something heavier than cardio, and the changing rooms and reception something calm. The tempo moves by itself from the quiet morning group to the full evening, and between the tracks you hear your own class timetable or Saturday’s taster class. With more clubs you run them all from one dashboard.
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 gym
Other kinds of business
- Music for your yoga studio, without Buma and SenaBackground music for yoga studios
- Music for your dance school, without Buma and SenaMusic for dance schools
- Background music for your swimming pool, without Buma and SenaSwimming pools and swim centres
- Music for your physiotherapy practice, without Buma and SenaFor physiotherapy practices
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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