Background music for your petrol station, without Buma and Sena
RadioMatic gives your petrol station a station of its own for the shop and the forecourt canopy, with your own offers between the tracks and no advertising for another brand.
You easily pay
€ 1,613
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
At a petrol station your customer is there for three minutes. He walks in, picks up a coffee or a sandwich, pays and is gone. That is too short to build a mood, and exactly long enough to hear one thing. That is why with RadioMatic your announcements sit inside the station. The DJ moments name your petrol station and announce that the coffee is free with a full tank, that the car wash is on offer this week or that the shop is open until midnight. You type it in and you hear it on the next round, in the voice you pick.
Big chains have been doing this for years with a centrally recorded tape. For one or two petrol stations that has been out of reach until now. It is also your own message and nobody else’s. Third-party advertising never comes in between. So no supermarket or other fuel chain is advertising in your shop, which does happen with ordinary radio in the shop.
The real listeners are your staff. Someone stands there behind the till for an eight-hour shift, sometimes alone, sometimes at night. For that person it makes all the difference whether they hear a fixed list or a station that gets new music every day in the same style. With more petrol stations you run them from a single dashboard with a mood of its own, its own offers and its own opening hours per site.
At a petrol station the Sena bill is a multiple of the Buma one
A petrol station is open to the public. That is why it does not fall under the work spaces tariff, where offices and workshops pay per employee. At Buma/Stemra your shop belongs in the lower of the two background music categories, and petrol stations are named in so many words on that closed list. So you pay per square metre, in brackets. Sena looks at your floor area as well, but classifies a petrol station with the shopping streets and shopping centres. That is one of the heaviest tables Sena has.
What stands out about that, and is rarely written down anywhere, is the ratio between the two. At a petrol station the Sena bill is almost three times the Buma/Stemra one. In most other sectors it runs the other way round or the two sit close together. Anyone budgeting on that picture falls well short here. If your shop sits just over a bracket line, you also feel that far harder on the Sena side than on the Buma side. How the two organisations relate to each other is explained in the difference between Buma/Stemra and Sena.
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 | € 427 |
|---|---|
| Sena, including the RAAP-PPI surcharge | € 1,186 |
| Together per year | € 1,613 |
Sources: Buma/Stemra, binding tariff text for mechanical background music BUM.129.26/01, article 7 and article 8, the mechanical background music tariff sheet BUM.413.26/01, which lists petrol stations under category B, Sena, 2026 tariff overview, page 9, table Winkelstraten / winkelcentra / galerijen / passages / buitenruimtes / tankstations, and Buma/Stemra on background music for businesses. The category B scale runs by floor area up to 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 m², and the Sena scale follows the same lines. Article 8 of BUM.129 provides that floor areas are added together where the same music from the same source plays in different spaces. 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.
Music for a three-minute customer and an eight-hour shift
In a shop you have two listeners who stay for very different lengths of time. The customer hears one and a half tracks at most, your till operator a whole shift. For the customer what counts most is that it is not quiet and cold in there. An empty shop with only the hum of the cooling feels uncomfortable. Recognisable and lightly cheerful works better there than music that builds slowly, because he never gets to the end of that build.
For your staff the opposite applies. Everything that stands out starts to bore, and everything that comes back in the same order every day starts to irritate. That is why it helps that the music is generated rather than coming from a list. The style you set stays, the tracks do not. The part of the day can move along with it. In the morning rush there is a queue at the coffee and a bit more tempo fits. In the evening and at night, calmer and softer is nicer for the only person standing there then.
Under the canopy it is different again. Someone stands there with the nozzle in hand looking at the amount, and passing traffic makes a lot of noise. Speakers outside therefore ask for slightly firmer music and a different volume than inside. You make the canopy a separate zone with a mood of its own. There you might play only your own announcements about the car wash or the coffee offer.
On the speakers you already have
Nothing has to be added. RadioMatic is a stream and it comes in on the installation already hanging in your shop. Usually that is an amplifier in the back office with ceiling speakers overhead and a couple of horn speakers under the canopy. The stream goes into the system through the line-in on that amplifier. If you have Sonos or a Chromecast, it plays on that, and a browser on the PC behind the till is enough too.
If shop and canopy are already separate zones on your amplifier, those zones stay as they are. If you want something different inside than outside, you put two sources in and run them both from the same dashboard. With several stations, every site has a mood of its own and its own offers under one account. After your application is approved, usually within five working days, a 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 petrol station and you will come across Tunify and Retail Radio from Cue Creative, among others. Tunify names petrol stations in so many words in the sector list on its own pricing page. Retail Radio builds in-store stations for chains such as MediaMarkt.
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 or public use you need a public performance licence of your own, and that services such as Spotify and Apple Music are not meant for it. Cue Creative says it gives extensive advice on the rights at Buma/Stemra and Sena. What those rights cost is set out above.
With RadioMatic the customer who spends three minutes in your shop hears light, cheerful music and your own offer, such as the free coffee with a full tank. Under the canopy, where someone stands with the nozzle in hand watching the amount, a zone of its own plays firmer music and your announcement about the car wash. At night the shop gets calmer by itself for whoever is alone behind the till.
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
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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.