If you stream copyrighted commercial music on your station, you need music licenses. These are issued by your country’s rights organizations, not by CloudRadio. We provide hosting and streaming infrastructure; we do not pay royalties or report listening data on your behalf.
Below: your three options, what licenses look like by country, and how to skip licensing entirely if you’d rather.
The three paths
Most broadcasters fall into one of these:
- License commercial music yourself. You sign agreements with your country’s rights organizations and pay annual or usage-based fees. This is what you do if you want to play chart hits, classic rock, the catalog you grew up with.
- Use a royalty-free or production music service. A subscription like Epidemic Sound or Artlist gives you a catalog you can broadcast without contacting any rights organization. Easier, predictable cost, smaller catalog. See Royalty-free alternatives below.
- Run a talk, podcast, or Creative Commons station. No commercial music = no music licensing. Talk radio, news, sports commentary, podcast replays, public-domain audio, and CC-licensed catalogs are all licensing-free.
If you’re in option 2 or 3, you can stop reading the country sections; your licensing question is already answered.
Two rights, not one
For option 1, every country splits music licensing into two separate rights, and you typically need both:
- Musical work / composition: the song itself (lyrics, melody). Owned by songwriters and publishers, collected by Performing Rights Organizations (PROs).
- Sound recording: the specific recorded performance. Owned by recording artists and labels, collected by neighboring-rights or sound-recording organizations.
If a license body covers only one of these, you still need a separate license for the other. The country sections below list both.
Country-by-country
United States
You need licenses from all four PROs (musical work) and SoundExchange (sound recording).
Musical work: pick the PROs that cover the songs in your catalog:
- ASCAP: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
- BMI: Broadcast Music, Inc.
- SESAC
- GMR: Global Music Rights, founded by Irving Azoff in 2013. Smaller catalog but includes Bruce Springsteen, Bruno Mars, The Eagles, The Weeknd, and others. Often overlooked.
In practice, most stations license all four because it’s hard to know which PRO represents which song.
Sound recording: statutory webcaster license:
- SoundExchange: Pay per performance under the statutory webcasting license. For 2026, commercial non-subscription webcasters pay $0.0025 per performance with a $1,000 annual minimum per station. Reporting and payment are monthly.
United Kingdom
Two licenses, both required:
- PRS for Music: composition. PRS offers a Limited Online Music Licence (LOML) and a full Internet Radio Licence; the prior £12,500 LOML revenue cap was removed in PRS’s 2024–2025 update, so more small stations qualify.
- PPL: sound recording. PPL’s Linear Webcast Licence covers internet radio with scheduled (non-on-demand) playback.
Fee tiers and thresholds change every year or two; check both sites for current rates rather than relying on numbers in third-party blog posts.
Canada
Two licenses, both required:
- SOCAN: composition. Covers internet radio under SOCAN’s Tariff for Internet - Other Audio Services.
- Re:Sound: sound recording. Re:Sound’s Tariff 8 is the Canadian equivalent of SoundExchange’s role: it pays performers and record labels for non-interactive webcasting.
Canadian webcasters need both. Tariff 8 fees and per-play rates are set periodically by the Copyright Board of Canada.
Australia
Two licenses, both required:
- APRA AMCOS: composition.
- PPCA: sound recording. PPCA’s online radio licensing is increasingly handled through the joint OneMusic Australia portal.
Community and small commercial stations are often quoted around 0.8% of revenue, with discounts for non-commercial operators.
France
Two licenses, both required:
- SACEM: composition. SACEM publishes a webradio fee schedule; small webradios start in the low double-digit euros per channel per year, with usage-based pricing above that.
- SCPP and/or SPPF: sound recording producers. Which one(s) you need depends on whose catalog you play. SCPP represents the major labels; SPPF represents independents.
Germany
Two licenses, both required:
GVL fees scale with broadcast hours, average audience size, and how many tracks you have stored. A small commercial webradio is roughly €30/month on the GVL side, plus separate GEMA fees.
Netherlands
Two licenses, both required:
- Buma/Stemra: composition.
- Sena: sound recording.
Stichting Webcasting Nederland bundles both into a single signup process, with hobby-tier stations starting around €26/month.
South Africa
You actually need three:
- SAMRO: composition (performance rights).
- CAPASSO: composition (mechanical rights for streaming and downloads).
- SAMPRA and/or RiSA: sound recording (neighboring rights for performers and labels).
Note: the older “just CAPASSO” advice you may see online is incomplete. Most South African webcasters need agreements covering all three rights.
Other countries
The same two-rights pattern applies almost everywhere: one PRO for composition, one neighboring-rights organization for sound recording. If you’re in a country not listed here, search for “PRO + your country” and “neighboring rights + your country” to find both.
Royalty-free alternatives
For many CloudRadio customers, especially hobbyists and niche-genre stations, a royalty-free music subscription is the cleanest answer. You pay one company, you get a catalog cleared for broadcast, and you stop dealing with PROs entirely.
The main options:
- Epidemic Sound: direct-licensed catalog (Epidemic owns the rights), no cue sheets, broadcast use included. The most broadcaster-friendly of the big three.
- Artlist: broad catalog with a unified license; cue sheet reporting required for broadcast use.
- Soundstripe: subscription catalog, more focused on video creators than radio.
- Free Music Archive: large library of Creative Commons and public-domain tracks. Free, but you’re responsible for checking each track’s license terms.
- ccMixter: Creative Commons remixes and originals.
A royalty-free subscription does not replace your local licensing if you also play any commercial music. It’s all-or-nothing per track.
What CloudRadio does and doesn’t do
- We provide: Streaming infrastructure (Shoutcast, Icecast, HLS), AutoDJ, storage, listener delivery, a player, and analytics.
- We do not: Pay royalties to PROs or sound-recording organizations on your behalf, report your listening data to PROs, or provide bundled licensing.
- We can help with reporting: Most rights organizations want listener and play-count data when you report. CloudRadio’s Statistics page exports the listener counts and per-track play data you’ll need for monthly reports to SoundExchange, Re:Sound, PPL, and similar bodies.
If you’re switching from a host that bundled licensing (like Live365), you take on the licensing relationship yourself when you move. That’s usually still cheaper at any meaningful station size, but it’s an extra setup step.
Geo-blocking
Some licenses (especially blanket licenses in the UK, EU, and Australia) restrict you to listeners in your home country. If your license is geo-restricted and you broadcast worldwide, you’re out of compliance.
CloudRadio does not currently provide built-in geo-blocking at the player level. If you need it, the practical workarounds are: only list your station in directories scoped to your country, or use a CDN/proxy in front of CloudRadio that filters by listener IP.
Quick checklist
Before you go live with commercial music:
- [ ] Identified which country’s rules apply (where you operate, not where listeners are)
- [ ] Signed up with the composition PRO(s) for that country
- [ ] Signed up with the sound recording organization for that country
- [ ] Or: chose a royalty-free service instead and confirmed it covers broadcast use
- [ ] Or: confirmed your station is talk-only / podcast-only / CC-only and needs no music licenses
- [ ] Set a reminder to export listener and play-count stats monthly for whichever bodies require them
Disclaimer: This article is informational, not legal advice. Music licensing rules and fees change. Verify the current requirements directly with each rights organization before launching your station, and consult a lawyer in your country if you have any doubts. Services CloudRadio Inc. does not provide licensing or pay royalties on your behalf.