Music Licensing for Fitness Studios: ASCAP, BMI, and Legal Playlists

Yes, your studio needs music licenses, and probably more than one. In the US, public performance rights are split across separate performing rights organizations, and each licenses only its own catalog. Start with the Three-Zone Map: group class rooms, ambient areas, and anything you stream or record.

Do I need a music license for my fitness studio?

Almost certainly. Playing recorded music to a room of paying members is a public performance, and that needs permission from whoever owns the songs.

The right sits in Section 106(4) of the Copyright Act, which gives the owner of a musical work the exclusive right to perform it publicly. A 6:00 a.m. spin class with 18 bikes and a 45-minute playlist is a public performance whether or not you charge for that specific class. Buying the track gives you a copy. It does not give you permission to perform it to a room.

Which performing rights organizations do I have to pay?

Every organization whose writers are in your rotation. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR each license only their own catalog, separately.

Your ASCAP receipt is not a defense against a BMI claim. Run the Four-Catalog Check before you sign anything. Pull the forty tracks that genuinely repeat across your schedule, because every studio has a core rotation far smaller than its library. Look each one up in the PRO repertory search tools and tally which organization appears. A mainstream rotation lands mostly on ASCAP and BMI. SESAC and GMR turn up in ones and twos, and those ones and twos tend to be stadium-scale writers whose publishers do enforce.

Can I just play Spotify or Apple Music in my studio?

No. Spotify's own policy limits the service to personal, non-commercial use and names dance studios directly. No consumer tier changes that.

Spotify's public and commercial use article says the service is for personal, non-commercial use and that you cannot broadcast or play it publicly from a business such as a bar, store, salon, or dance studio. Spotify points businesses to a separate commercial product instead. There is no upgrade path inside the consumer app, which is why "we pay for Premium" is not an answer.

Two obligations, not one. The platform's terms govern where you may play its stream. The PRO licenses govern the songs themselves. You need both, and paying one does not satisfy the other.

Does the radio exemption cover my studio?

Rarely. It covers FCC-licensed broadcasts on small premises, not your own playlist files, and the square-footage ceiling is measured more broadly than owners expect.

Section 110(5)(B) exempts the communication of a transmission originated by an FCC-licensed radio or television station where the establishment is under 2,000 gross square feet, excluding parking, or under 3,750 gross square feet for food service and drinking establishments. Above those thresholds the exemption survives only inside strict speaker and screen limits. In every case you cannot charge directly to hear the transmission, and you cannot retransmit it beyond the premises.

Two traps. First, gross square footage counts your back office, retail shelf, and storage, not just the floor members see. A 1,700 square foot pilates studio can look exempt on paper and fail once the whole lease is measured. Second, the exemption attaches to the broadcast. Play an FM station in the lobby and you may be covered. Play a downloaded reformer playlist through the same speakers and you are not.

How do ASCAP and BMI decide what my studio owes?

Not by a flat fee. Both price fitness businesses on size and usage: members, class capacity, the floor space carrying ambient music, and whether music runs on screens.

BMI and ASCAP each publish their own rate schedules for fitness and health clubs, and both split usage into roughly the same buckets: group fitness classes, ambient music in training and relaxation areas, and audio-visual performances on TVs. Rates are indexed, so last year's quote is not this year's price.

Walk the floor with your floorplan and build the Three-Zone Map. Zone 1: each group room, its capacity, and its average classes per week. Zone 2: the square footage where ambient music plays, lobby and changing rooms included. Zone 3: screens, hold music, virtual classes. Those are the numbers you will be asked for, and the numbers you will be billed on.

The operator consequence is the part nobody says out loud. Where a fee keys on room capacity and class count, it does not care about attendance. A 22-mat room running 30 classes a week is billed on the capacity you declared, not the 300 people who actually turned up. That 11:00 a.m. class averaging four people is the most expensive music in the building. Consolidate it before renewal, not after.

What happens if I never buy a license?

Statutory damages are assessed per song, not per class or per visit, and a documented warning letter removes your best argument for leniency.

Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), a copyright owner can elect statutory damages of not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work infringed. Where the court finds willfulness, that ceiling rises to $150,000 per work. Where the infringer proves it did not know and had no reason to know, the court may reduce the award to as little as $200.

Four songs in one 45-minute class is four works. That arithmetic is why a single documented visit matters, and why the innocent-infringement floor is not a plan: an unanswered PRO letter sitting in your inbox is the evidence that destroys it. Log every piece of licensing mail, reply inside 10 business days even if the reply is only "we are reviewing this," and file the licenses beside your insurance certificate. Liability follows whoever controls the room and profits from the performance, and PRO suits routinely name the owner alongside the business, which is worth reading next to how studio entity structure works.

Do virtual and recorded classes need a separate license?

Usually yes. A blanket license for your premises does not cover recording music into video, which is a separate reproduction and synchronization right.

Performing a song in your studio and fixing it into a file are different acts. On-demand libraries, replay archives, and a 20-second reel filmed mid-class all involve reproduction and sync, which sit with publishers and, for the master, the label. PRO blanket licenses do not grant them.

Run two libraries and label them that way in your shared drive. "Room" holds commercial tracks under your PRO licenses. "Camera" holds production library music cleared for sync. Then set the filming rule: if a phone is recording, the room switches to the Camera library first. The most common way a studio's music practices become public is an instructor filming a live class with a chart track in the audio bed.

What about instructors who bring their own playlists?

The venue is liable for whatever plays inside it. Employment status does not move that liability, so handle it in the contract.

Add one clause to every instructor agreement: music plays through the studio-approved source only, personal streaming accounts are not permitted on studio equipment, and no class recording without written approval. Get it signed inside the onboarding pack, with the same discipline you apply to liability waivers. Contractor status shifts payroll risk, not copyright risk.

Then fix the onboarding gap that creates the problem. New instructors get the studio music account credentials on day one, in the same handover as door codes and the schedule. Most personal-account violations happen in week one, when someone needed music and nobody gave them a login.

How do I build a playlist system the front desk can run?

One licensed source, one shared account, one written procedure, and a named owner who reviews it in the first week of every quarter.

Call it the Quarterly Catalog Review and put four items on it. Reconcile the current class schedule against the room capacities you declared on each license. Re-run the Four-Catalog Check on tracks added since last quarter. Confirm renewal dates and that autopay cards have not expired. Verify the streaming subscription is still on the business tier.

Keep it where the rest of your compliance calendar lives, next to renewal dates and sales tax filings, not in a private note. The licensing-visit script belongs in front desk training and is short: accept the representative's card, sign nothing, do not estimate class counts or capacities on the spot, log the visit with a timestamp, and route it to the owner within two hours. Front desk staff guessing at numbers under pressure is how studios end up licensed for capacity they do not run.

What is the cheapest legal setup for a small studio?

A business music subscription, ASCAP and BMI licenses, and a cleared production library for video. Add SESAC or GMR only when your rotation demands it.

Buy in that order, because the source subscription is what stops the daily violation while the PRO paperwork is processing. Get quotes using real room capacities and real weekly class counts, not aspirational ones, and ask each organization about prepayment terms and trade-association rates before you sign.

The largest saving is structural, not negotiated. Where fees track capacity multiplied by class count, a nearly empty second room running "just a few" classes still adds billable capacity all year. Kill the ghost class, not the popular one. Time that review to your schedule and pricing planning, since annual and monthly membership structures change both your member count and your class density in the same quarter.