Why more businesses are looking at AI music
Operators who approach us almost always give the same three reasons. A background piece on what is changing about music in retail spaces, and what is not.
This piece is our own observation from conversations with business owners, not market research. We deliberately quote no percentages. We could not stand behind them.
The first reason is almost always the bill. A business that plays music pays twice. Once to Buma/Stemra and Sena for the rights, and once to the music provider for the subscription. For a two-hundred-square-metre shop with no more than five staff, the first part alone is € 608 a year (2026 base tariff), and more than three times that in hospitality. Across several sites, that multiplies per location.
The second reason is control. Playing a playlist gives you music, but not radio. Nothing sits between the tracks: no announcement of this week’s offer, no greeting that matches the time of day, no voice that mentions the business by name. Chains that do want this have to arrange it per site or hire a voice-over.
The third reason is rarely the first one mentioned, but it always comes up: uncertainty. Many operators run Spotify or a personal account in their business, which those services prohibit in their terms. They know it does not hold up and would rather not have the conversation.
What generative AI changes is where the music comes from. If there is no human author, there is no rights holder, and there is nothing to collect. That is not a trick and not a grey area. It follows directly from how the Dutch Copyright Act and the Neighbouring Rights Act are built. It removes a line from the budget that until recently looked unavoidable.
What does not change is whether it actually sounds good. We have no argument for that, only a listen button. And whether the legal reasoning holds. An operator should be able to read that for themselves, which is why our full memorandum is public on the site rather than confined to a sales conversation.
Where we are careful ourselves: AI music is not for every business. In a bar where the music choice *is* the character of the place, an automatically composed station adds nothing. It works where music is functional and needs to be managed centrally.