Digital Delivery

The OneMusic licence covers you for the use of our music in your business regardless of the source – whether it’s from radio, CDs, or a digital music service.

You should be aware that a OneMusic licence, even when it includes Digital Delivery only gives you permission to use our music in your business. It does not override the Terms of Use for the personal digital music service, nor does it give you permission to use that particular digital music service for a commercial purpose – that permission can only come from the owners of that digital music service.

Even with our licence, the use of digital music services by you in your business may be in breach of the terms and conditions of your end user agreement with that service. You should check with your service provider.

When you play our music in a business you need our permission to do so. Additional permission also applies when using a digital music service, downloading or copying our music.

Under the Copyright Act (1994), these rights are distinct and have different treatments and restrictions:

• Background Music covers music played in a non-domestic setting 'public performance' Section 16
• Digital Delivery covers copying music; or caching music from the digital music service onto your device; outside of personal use Section 81A

Digital Delivery covers the reproduction and/or temporary storage (caching) of music copied for the purposes of public performance.

• Reproduction means the copying of audio or audio-visual material (whether digitally or via physical formats) for the purposes of performance of our music, with such copies being either in permanent form (e.g. a copy of a CD or a digital download of an MP3 file) or Cached in temporary form. Reproduction also covers the copying that occurs when streaming our music from a domestic digital music service in a commercial or business environment.
• Cached or Caching is, for the purpose of the Music Dubbing agreement, a digital reproduction (i.e. copying) of our music that is made to allow temporary access to a file on a device without interruption in low or no bandwidth circumstances.

If you don’t download, copy, or use a digital music service in your business you do not need the additional OneMusic Dubbing Licence.

If you hold a OneMusic Background Music licence you can play music using:

• New Zealand radio stations*
• Original CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray
• Television stations
• Vinyl and tapes

A Background Music Supplier* might also be an option for your business.

*Conditions apply.

When you hear about music royalties, that’s what we do.

Your OneMusic licence fee is distributed by APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ, who are the companies behind OneMusic. Each organisation has a commitment to their music creators and their own distribution policies.

Every month over 330 million lines of music data is analysed from digital music services, background music suppliers, radio stations, television stations, live performers and more. After minimal administration costs all money collected is paid to our local and international music creators – songwriters, composers, publishers, recording artists and record labels.

Find out more from APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ.

To be fair to the businesses that hold a OneMusic licence, and to the musicians who created and own the music being played, OneMusic runs a compliance programme. This involves visiting businesses to confirm whether they play our members’ music and if so, following up to ensure an appropriate licence is taken out. Our licensing team provides those using music with all the information they need and are happy to talk through any issues or questions. If a business using our members’ music simply refuses to hold the appropriate licence, legal proceedings are issued to reach a resolution.