Background music for your optician’s shop, without Buma and Sena
RadioMatic gives your optician’s shop its own station for the shop floor and a quiet setting for the examination room, and you pay nothing 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 optician’s 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
Your customer listens for a while An optician’s shop sells almost nothing within five minutes. An appointment is made, an eye test is done, frames are tried on and people come back for the collection. All that time your customer hears what plays in your shop.
Announcing eye tests and guarantees The DJ moments name your business and can tell people an eye test can be booked online, that the guarantee on lenses runs for two years or that there is an offer on prescription sunglasses. You type it in and it is there on the next round. You do not need a studio and a voice actor for it. Until now only chains could afford announcements like these.
No commercials for cheaper lenses Third-party advertising never comes between the tracks. In a shop that carries a few frame brands that is not a detail, because a commercial for a chain offering the same lenses more cheaply does not belong in your building.
Optional news, quiet exam room If you want a short bulletin on the hour with local news, the weather and the traffic, that is possible, with subjects you switch on yourself. And in the examination room you switch off everything that speaks, so that only music is left there or nothing at all.
New music every day The music is generated and not pulled from a fixed list. For a shop of 90 m² where three or four people stand every day, that is the difference between a list that starts to grate after two months and a station that adds new music every day in the same style. With two or three shops you run them from one dashboard while every branch keeps its own mood and its own opening hours.
What does music in your optician’s shop cost in Buma and Sena payments?
Buma charges per square metre Buma/Stemra charges an optician’s shop under the shop category, per square metre. The tariff climbs in brackets. Within a bracket you pay the same. One metre over the line puts you in the next bracket, and that costs half as much again. You want to know that line before you take an adjoining space into your shop.
Sena counts your skilled staff Sena counts the number of staff who hear the music. With a small floor and a few skilled people, an optician’s shop often sits in the lowest bracket at both. The examination room can still change that. Play something different there from the shop and at Buma/Stemra that is a second space with its own tariff. Play the same stream more quietly there and it stays one bracket.
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 | € 285 |
|---|---|
| Sena, including the RAAP-PPI surcharge | € 181 |
| Together per year | € 466 |
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, where the step from the first to the second bracket is € 284.54 against € 426.81. 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 the shop floor, and what suits the examination room?
Trying on frames at the mirror In the shop someone stands looking in a mirror with a frame on their face, usually with someone beside them who has a view on it. That is a small, personal moment in the middle of a public space. Music that runs evenly there makes it easier to say out loud that something does not suit, because the whole shop is not listening in. What works for that is a soft layer without spikes in volume and without vocals that claim attention. A chart list does the opposite.
Conversations at the desk At the desk people talk about eyes, and that often means health. Anyone who gets a referral or hears that something has changed in their sight does not want the queue behind them following it word for word. A constant layer of music at low volume makes a conversation like that harder to follow for anyone standing a few metres away. That is not sound insulation, but in practice it helps.
Quiet in the examination room The examination room is another story. Someone sits there for half an hour in a half-dark room reading letters and answering questions. Concentration is the product there. Many opticians want no music at all in there, and others want something very soft to fill the silence and the sound of the equipment. With RadioMatic that is a separate zone with its own setting, with everything that speaks switched off, and you turn it on or off as the moment asks.
No new equipment, only a different source
Sonos, Chromecast or a browser No new hardware is needed. RadioMatic is a stream. In an optician’s shop of 90 m² that is in practice a Sonos in the shop, a Chromecast on an existing amplifier, or the line-in on the small amplifier your built-in speakers are connected to. A browser on the PC you keep your appointments on is enough to start as well.
A separate source for testing For the examination room you put a second source there, a small speaker for instance, and you set that separately from the same dashboard. That way you can play more quietly there or nothing at all, while the shop carries on. With two or three branches every shop 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
Levies through the subscription Look for music for your optician’s shop and you end up with suppliers who serve shops in general. Backsound supplies music with its own system and writes on its shop page that the Buma and Sena rights are included in the subscription. There you pay the levies through the price of the subscription.
Royalty-free still means levies Tunify also sells a subscription with royalty-free music. Its terms state that in certain countries performing and neighbouring rights have to run through copyright organisations, and that the customer is responsible for those payments. Royalty-free music is still made and recorded by people. What the levies cost for an optician’s shop is set out above.
With RadioMatic your examination room stays silent or very soft, with no announcements, while a soft layer of music carries on in the shop. Someone trying a frame at the mirror then finds it easier to say out loud that it does not suit, and at the desk the queue has a harder time following your conversation. Between the tracks your customer hears that an eye test can be booked online or that there is an offer on prescription sunglasses.
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 optician’s shop
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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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