Ritmood — royalty-free music for businesses
Background music you can play in a café, a restaurant, a shop or a gym. The catalogue is Ritmood’s own copyright; permission to play comes with the subscription. There are 53 stations split by sector.
What it solves
Music playing in a venue is not music playing at home. Broadcasting music in a commercial space counts as "use of a work in a place open to the public", and the collecting societies the rights holders belong to can require permission and payment for it. A personal music subscription does not cover that permission — that subscription is for personal listening.
I went into the detail in a separate article: which society represents what, what is asked of a business, and in which cases a payment comes up.
What Ritmood does
The copyright in the works in the Ritmood catalogue belongs to Ritmood. Those works are not in any collecting society’s repertoire, so there is no claim for those societies to make over them. Permission to play in a venue is granted with the subscription itself.
There is one obvious condition, but it is worth saying: only Ritmood has to be playing. When the radio goes on in between, or a customer’s request is connected from a phone, the work playing at that moment is not in the Ritmood catalogue.
What you get
- 53 stations split by sector — cafés, restaurants, shops, gyms and others
- Its own catalogue; registered with no collecting society
- Permission to play included with the subscription
- Plays from the app; you do not have to buy a separate device
Frequently asked
- I play Spotify in my café — is that a problem?
- Personal music subscriptions put commercial and public use outside their scope in their terms. On top of that, because the works played are in the collecting societies’ repertoires, a business can be asked separately for permission and payment. The detail is in this article.
- What if a collecting society turns up at my door anyway?
- What decides it is the source of the music playing at that moment. If Ritmood is playing, the works playing belong to Ritmood and are not in the societies’ repertoires. That is why not mixing sources matters.
- Who chooses the music?
- You open one of the stations prepared for your sector. The music that should play in a café is not the music that should play in a gym; that is where the split comes from.
- Is it free?
- No, it is used on a subscription. Current plans and terms are on ritmood.com.
Have a look at Ritmood
The product has its own site: plans, catalogue and sign-up are there. If you want to ask about setup, or whether it suits your business, you can also write to me directly.
ritmood.com