I was at a coffee shop recently and they were playing Pandora over the stereo system. Then, an advertisement came on and announced that we were listening to Pandora, then told me about a car dealership in southern California, of all places. At a minimum, this coffee shop could pay for Pandora One for $4/month to have no ads. At a maximum, Pandora for Business is $25/month (includes licenses for commercial play). I’m not one to argue much, but that’s not that expensive. Especially so that your customers don’t need to listen to advertisements. Coffee shops have lots of options here: They can pay licenses directly so that they can play any song on their stereo, but that’s more expensive than just signing up for a service such as Pandora. What are most coffee shops in Arizona doing for music at their locations? I’ve seen everything from simply playing whatever radio station sounds interesting, to full on iTunes via Airplay (mp3 or CDs). I’ve even seen SiriusXM for Business, and record players. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rdio and Spotify are also being used, but from my understanding neither of those services offer a business usage license. A cursory glance online reveals there are a lot of apps and businesses available that serve this market. One more to throw into the hat is Rockbot which looks like it’s popular.
Steve Belt We use DMX, which gives us a properly licensed Pandora, that doesn’t have any ads. The cost to us is $27.18/month. Pandora One would get rid of the ads, but it wouldn’t properly license you. We do still have to let it know we are still listening. If a shop doesn’t have licensing, they are going to find you, and they are going to threaten you with a law suit. 0 Reply October 24, 2013
