Background music for your pet shop, without Buma and Sena
RadioMatic gives your specialist pet shop its own station with its own volume and mood for each corner, 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 pet 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
Whoever waits hears your messages In a pet shop more advice is given than goods are sold. People come in with a question about a dog that will not eat or an aquarium that stays cloudy, and that conversation takes longer than a transaction at the till. Anyone waiting to be helped hears your announcements between the tracks in the meantime.
Grooming slots, advice days and offers The DJ moments name your shop and can tell people the grooming salon still has room this week, that there is a feeding advice afternoon on Saturday or that the offer on cat litter runs until Sunday. You type it in and it is there on the next round, without a studio and without a voice actor.
No ads for other food brands What never comes in between is third-party advertising. In a specialist pet shop that is more concrete than elsewhere, because you sell a few brands of food you chose on purpose and you do not want a commercial for a brand you do not have on the shelf. If you want local news with the weather and the traffic on the hour, that is possible, with subjects you choose yourself. Want music only on a quiet morning, then you switch off everything that speaks.
Each corner its own sound A pet shop has corners that are nothing like each other. By the rodents and the birds you want it soft and even, by the dog supplies it can sound more ordinary, and at the back in the care room your staff stand all day. You set that per zone from one dashboard, and with more branches every shop keeps its own mood and announcements under one account. The music is generated rather than pulled from a fixed list, so your staff do not hear the same tracks come round every week.
Which tariff does your pet shop fall under at Buma and Sena?
Shop or self-service at Buma Buma/Stemra charges a specialist pet shop under the shop category, so per square metre. That category is a closed list, with an exception worth knowing. Shops fall inside it, self-service outlets do not. If you have a staffed advice desk, you are a shop. If your business is laid out as self-service, you fall outside that category by the letter of the tariff text. What does apply then is not written out. Ask about it in writing before you file a declaration.
Sena counts your staff Sena charges your business as general retail and counts the staff who hear the music. Take on two more skilled people without expanding by a single metre and your Buma bill stays the same. Your Sena bill does go up, as soon as you cross a bracket line. If you have a grooming salon or a care room at the back with different music from the shop, that is a second item at Buma/Stemra. At Sena everyone who hears the music simply counts.
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 | € 363 |
| Together per year | € 790 |
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. Article 7 is a closed list under which supermarkets, department stores and self-service outlets fall outside category B. 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.
Music in a shop where animals live too
No claims about animals A pet shop is the only shop where part of the audience is there day and night. We make no claims about what music does to animals, because we have no research for that and we do not invent it. What we do arrange is the practical side.
A quiet zone by the enclosures By the enclosures for birds, rodents and fish you can make a separate zone with a lower volume, without announcements and without sudden spikes in dynamics, while it carries on as normal further into the shop. What should play there exactly is for your own experience and your supplier’s advice, not for us.
Music beneath advice at the desk In the rest of the shop it is mainly a question of being understood. At the desk people are told how many grams of food a puppy gets a day or why an aquarium stays cloudy, and conversations like that ask for music that stays underneath.
Pumps and filters less noticeable At the same time many pet shops already have a base sound of pumps, filters and ventilation, and that is always there. A calm, even layer of music makes that hum less noticeable than silence does, as long as the volume stays low enough not to compete with it.
Fuller on a Saturday Saturday is a different business from Tuesday morning. Families come in, children walk past the aquariums and there is a queue at the till. The shop corner can be a step fuller then, while the animal corner stays soft. With RadioMatic you set that per part of the day and per zone, and it changes by itself without anyone having to stand at a knob.
Connecting to what is in the shop now
Nothing to replace, just connect Nothing has to be replaced. RadioMatic is a stream and it comes in on your existing installation. If you have ceiling speakers on an amplifier, the stream goes in through the line-in and your zones stay as they are. If there is a Sonos or a Chromecast on the installation, it plays on that. A browser on the PC behind the desk is enough to start.
Its own source for the animals For the animal corner you put a separate source there with its own volume, and you run that from the same dashboard as the rest of the shop. The same goes for a grooming salon or a care room at the back. With more 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
Suppliers for shops in general Look for music for your pet shop and you end up with suppliers who serve shops in general. My Instore Radio supplies background music on subscription to shops, hospitality and shopping centres. Muziek op de Zaak is an installer that delivers music, public address and mood lighting in one package, with specialist shops as its target group.
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, on top of the subscription. What those bills cost is set out above.
With RadioMatic you give the corner with the birds, rodents and aquariums its own zone with a lower volume and no announcements, while the dog supplies and the till carry on as normal. Between the tracks your customer hears that the grooming salon still has room or that the offer on cat litter runs until Sunday. On Saturday, when the families come in, the shop corner turns a step fuller by itself.
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 pet 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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