Music for your gym, without Buma and Sena
If you are looking for music for your gym, RadioMatic gives you a station of its own 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.
You easily pay
€ 1,824
a year to Buma/Stemra and Sena
If you play music in your business, this bill is compulsory. The amount is the base rate for the worked example below, and your music subscription comes on top of it.
Work out what you pay nowWith RadioMatic you pay
€ 29.99
per location per month, billed yearly
= € 360 a year, everything included
The Starter plan, excluding VAT. No payment is due to Buma/Stemra or Sena, so this is the whole amount. There is a free plan as well.
Fourteen days free to try. Monthly billing is available and costs 20% more, and only then can you cancel monthly. Once your application is approved, usually within five working days, your station is live in ten minutes.
What else you get
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.
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 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 a mood of its own, a timetable of its own and announcements of its own 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?
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 a table of its own for this sector, also per square metre and with the same bracket boundaries. One room, the same basis, and still two separate bills.
The question then is which square metres you declare, and there is more to that than it looks. 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. 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.
With RadioMatic no payment is due to Buma/Stemra or Sena, because the music is generated entirely by AI and there are therefore no rights holders. Buma/Stemra itself states that works made entirely by AI without a human creative contribution do not qualify for copyright or payment. The same applies to Sena. The law requires a phonogram released for commercial purposes, 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 stands in a table of its own 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.
Work out what you save on your current licence.
Slide in your situation and you will see what you currently pay in music rights every year. That amount disappears, on top of what you save on your current music subscription.
What music works in a gym?
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. So what you pick matters. With RadioMatic you fix a style and a tempo range per part of the day. That stays put, without the tracks repeating.
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.
A gym also runs into repetition 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 the tracks do not.
It works on your existing installation
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.
If you want something different in the weights area than on cardio, you put a source of its own in each zone and run both from the same dashboard. With several clubs each location keeps its own mood under one account. After your application is approved, usually within five working days, your station is live in ten minutes. The first fourteen days are free to try.
What you can choose from today
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.
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 no studio |
| Local news and weather | No | Yes, the station’s | No | Yes, your town, your choice of topics |
| Other people’s adverts | No | Yes | No | No |
| Buma/Stemra and Sena | Payable | Payable | See the terms | Not payable |
New music every day
The station keeps getting new tracks in the same style, because the music is generated rather than drawn from a fixed list. A track that lands well with your audience comes round more often, and then it is your hit. It was made for your station and plays nowhere else.
It names your business
Between the tracks, DJ voices announce what is going on at your place. Your offer, your opening hours, this week’s deal. That used to need a studio and a voice actor.
It moves with the day
The morning, the rush and the last hour each call for something different. That is set per part of the day and happens by itself, with nobody behind the counter picking a new list.
Local news if you want it
A short bulletin on the hour about your own town, with the weather and the traffic alongside. You choose which subjects you want, or you switch it off entirely.
No one else’s advertising
On an ordinary station the business down the road advertises in between your tracks. With us, nothing comes in between that is not yours.
Every location from one screen
Each site keeps its own mood, its own promotions and its own opening hours, and you run them all from the same place.
A playlist is worn out within two weeks, and on an ordinary station the business down the road advertises in between your tracks. With us the station is yours. Your style, your announcements, and the tracks that land with your audience come round more often.
Questions that come with this
Other kinds of business
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- Music for your dance school, without Buma and SenaMusic for dance schools
- Background music for your restaurant, without Buma and SenaBackground music for restaurants
- Background music for your fast food outlet, without Buma and SenaFast food and chain outlets
Ready to hear it for yourself?
Request access to the beta. Your own station for your business, 14 days free trial, and monthly cancellation if you pay monthly.