Music licensing for car dealerships: showrooms, workshops & groups

Car dealerships play music in customer showrooms and, often, in workshops and staff areas, usually across several branded sites. Because TheMusicLicence is assessed per site on audible area and usage, dealership groups can accumulate avoidable cost quickly.

Common dealership overcharges#

• Workshop, parts and back-office areas counted as customer-audible space.
• Showroom audio classified under a higher usage category than background music.
• Licences left unchanged after a showroom refit, rebrand or site closure.
• No consistent review across the group, so the same error repeats at every branch.

The showroom tariff trap#

A dealership showroom should be charged under the retail tariffs: the PPL shops-and-stores tariff explicitly covers garage forecourts and showrooms, alongside the PRS shops tariff, based on audible area. A recurring error is a showroom billed against a motor-vehicle tariff, which is designed for music played in or from vehicles (courtesy buses and the like), not the showroom floor. If your invoice references a vehicle-based tariff for a showroom, that’s worth checking.

How the area should actually be measured#

This is where the money usually sits. The retail tariff is measured only on the area the public can access and where music is audible: the showroom floor and customer waiting area. Workshops, MOT and service bays, valeting areas, parts stores and back offices are staff space: they shouldn’t be in the retail measurement at all, and any music there belongs on the far cheaper flat-rate workplace tariff. The common error is the whole site footprint going into the retail figure, which is exactly what happens when the area gets declared over the phone from a floor-plan total. Getting that split right on every showroom is a simple, repeatable correction across a whole group.

The multi-site opportunity#

For a group with several dealerships, correcting the audible-area basis and usage classification at each site, and recovering historic overpayments where available, can add up to a meaningful annual saving. One over-measurement, repeated across a 20-showroom estate, is a large annual number.

We’ll review your dealership invoices and tell you where you stand. One site? The free Invoice Check gives you a written verdict in five working days. Four or more sites? The estate review is free and we only charge if we recover money. See pricing.

This guide is general information, not legal advice, and MLC is an independent consultancy, not affiliated with PPL PRS Ltd, PRS for Music or PPL.