APRA AMCOS and PPCA would like to help youwith your Council’s music licensing needs.

About Us

APRA AMCOS is a non-profit member organisation with more than 87,000 members who are songwriters, composers and music publishers. APRA AMCOS licenses organisations to play, perform, copy, record or make available its members’ music, and distributes the royalties paid under those licences to our members and affiliate societies.

PPCA is a non-profit member organisation that provides licences to Australian businesses to play recorded music in public. PPCA offers blanket licences that cover thousands of record labels and millions of recordings across a vast range of genres. Each year all of PPCA’s net licence fees are distributed back to the record labels and Australian artists who created the recordings, so that they can continue to create recordings for us all to enjoy.

Together, we would like to make your music licensing obligations easier.

Help us help you

We know how important music is to a variety of services you provide to your community: not just putting on live music events, but also outdoor cinema, event spaces, background music at council run premises, council run youth groups and not-for-profit child care centres, and councils’ websites or music on hold. Our sister societies in the UK have undertaken extensive research - – on the power of music to create atmosphere, improve morale and attract clients.

As a Council, currently you could require up to 45 different licences to use music, and need to regularly reassess things like how many halls you have, and how many events are held at each; how many external phone lines you operate; the number of full time employees; or the number of devices (speakers, radios, TVs, etc) playing music.

We understand that managing this is cumbersome and leads to confusion, antipathy and non-compliance. Now, APRA AMCOS and PPCA want to cut through these barriers and make your legal use of music as simple as possible for you.

How will we do this?

Our proposal is to provide a one-stop-shop licence, which requires no ongoing administration on your part, to cover the vast majority of music licensing needs of your Council.

Thenew omnibus licence will replace virtually all the current licences you may have with APRA AMCOS and PPCA and will cover:

a)Background music at council buildings and council run premises;

b)Background music at council operated halls and function centres for all events where there is no admission fee;

c)Music in the workplace (for example playing live and recorded music in the LGA’s offices, warehouses and similar areas including in reception or front-of-office areas open to the public);

d)Music on hold;

e)Background music onyourCouncil’s websites;

f)Live and recorded music performances for all events where there is no admission fee and where the total payments to performers are no more than $30,000 per event;

g)Music for/in cinema screenings for all screenings where there is no admission fee;

h)Music licensing for council libraries including the reproduction of audio recordings and music in audio visual content for digital preservation;

i)Public Performance of music by street performers (where the performance is authorised by the council);

j)Music used in not-for-profit council-run child care centres; and

k)Reproduction of music for the purposes set out above.

The licence fee under this model would be derived from a Council’s population (as reported annually by the Australian Bureau of Statistics). This means no ongoing administration for Councils –we will take the information from the ABS and invoice you accordingly.

We think the rate should be differentiated between urban and regional areas based on the Australian Electoral Commissions (AEC) classification, with rates (inc GST at 10%) of 19.8 cents for urban Councils and 16.5 cents for regional Councils, with a minimum fee of $385.

But, we need to hear from you. We would be grateful if you could please go to answer a short series of questions.

There is more detailed information about the consultation and what will and won’t be covered under the proposed new licence at and information can also be located on the PPCA website.

If you have additional feedback or would like to discuss further there is a comments field in the survey, or you can email:

  • APRA AMCOS: David Sheils:
  • PPCA: Rohini Sivakumar:

Thanking you in advance

David SheilsRohini Sivakumar

Director Media LicensingCorporate Counsel - Commercial

APRA AMCOSPPCA