{"id":1280,"date":"2022-08-03T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T06:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2022-08-03T15:13:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T14:13:40","slug":"do-you-need-a-licence-for-hold-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/do-you-need-a-licence-for-hold-music\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find the right telephone hold music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you need to re-route business calls to another department, you need to let customers know that their call is still live while they&#8217;re placed on hold. If you leave them in silence, they may think they&#8217;ve been cut off and simply hang up.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s where hold music comes in. But how can you find the perfect music for your business, and do you need a licence? Let&#8217;s take a look.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>What is hold music?<\/h2>\n<p>Hold music is simply a piece of music that is played to replace the, sometimes long, silence that occurs when a phone call is placed on hold.<\/p>\n<p>The most commonly used hold music is thought to be a track called &#8216;Opus Number One&#8217; &#8211; the reason it&#8217;s so popular? It&#8217;s the default hold music on 65 million Cisco phone sets around the world!<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N7xn5zeJ4D4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>How to find the right hold music<\/h2>\n<p>Telephone hold music is a much-maligned medium &#8211; if it&#8217;s not a terrible rendition of something classical being played on a 1980&#8217;s Bontempi keyboard, it&#8217;s some awful, generic piece of aural tat that has a very loose connection to the term &#8216;music&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>If it&#8217;s a tune your familiar with, it can come across as warbly, scratchy and not at all like you remembered it.<\/p>\n<p>Even if it&#8217;s a hit tune you like and a recording of the real artist performing it, it can still get pretty grating when it&#8217;s on its third time around after you&#8217;ve been placed on hold for ten minutes.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all a matter of personal taste really.<\/p>\n<p>When choosing hold music, it&#8217;s a good idea to use something that fits the image of your business and will resonate with your customers &#8211; death metal might not be the best fit for a beauty salon, for instance, so some relaxing music you play in store might be more suitable.<\/p>\n<p>And consider how long customers will be on hold. If wait times are usually more than a couple of minutes, pick a variety of tunes to customers aren&#8217;t forced to listen to the same one, over and over.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve chosen some suitable tunes, the next thing to consider is, if you&#8217;re playing hold music over your telephone system, do you need a licence for it?<\/p>\n<p>And the short answer is almost always &#8216;yes&#8217;.<\/p>\n<h2>Do you need a licence for hold music?<\/h2>\n<p>Broadly speaking, there are two \u00a0types of licence you\u00a0will need\u00a0if you want\u00a0to play music on hold &#8211; a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ppluk.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Public Performance Licence (PPL)<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prsformusic.com\/Pages\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Performing Rights Society Licence (PRS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And while you may be tempted to go ahead and\u00a0play the hold music without getting a licence, be warned that both PPL and PRS are pretty keen on tracking down business that try to cheat the system and aren&#8217;t afraid to take businesses who do so to court.<\/p>\n<p>A PPL\u00a0licence covers the royalties paid to performers, such as the artist or orchestra\u00a0that made the recording, while a PRS licence sorts the royalties for the composers of the music and lyrics, the songwriters, basically.<\/p>\n<p>There are some exceptions though&#8230;<\/p>\n<h3>Classical music<\/h3>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever wondered why companies seem to favour a bit of classical to keep people on hold entertained, it could be because some compositions are out of\u00a0copyright.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright on written music expires 70 years after the composer has died, which means if the composer of \u00a0a piece of music died before 1944, you won&#8217;t require a PRS licence.<\/p>\n<p>However, if the sound recording was made in the last 50 years you&#8217;ll still most likely require a PPL licence to play it.<\/p>\n<h3>Royalty-free music<\/h3>\n<p>Royalty-free music adds another layer of complexity to the whole set-up as although you won&#8217;t need a PPL licence to pay the performers &#8211; money is normally made by selling the music at a higher price than other music &#8211; there&#8217;s a good chance you&#8217;ll still need a PRS licence to pay the composers.<\/p>\n<h3>What music is right for you?<\/h3>\n<p>When choosing hold music, it&#8217;s important not just to go for the cheapest option as the type of music you choose can say a lot about you and your company image &#8211; so, first and foremost, pick something that reflects you and your business.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/mimzy-19397\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mimzy on Pixabay<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/conference-call\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1777 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/conference-call-banner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"118\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you need to re-route business calls to another department, you need to let customers know that their call is still live while they&#8217;re placed on hold. If you leave<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/do-you-need-a-licence-for-hold-music\/\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to find the right telephone hold music<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3,16,9,8],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to find the right telephone hold music - ConferenceCall.co.uk blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We&#039;ve all winced at the music being played to us while we&#039;re on hold, but are there any other options? 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