Spotify in church

[vfjelde]

Is it allowed to use Spotify in a church if we have a agreement with the Norwegian lisencing organisation Tono? I know that the terms are for private use only, but since the musicians get paid from Tono i wonder if it is allowed.

[meahtenoha · Accepted solution]

Hi vfjelde - Welcome to the Community. 

I'm afraid in short the answer here is no. Spotify is not allowed to be played in any public scenarios. The reason for this is because we don't have the proper licenses for it.

[mattbootes]

Is this the case for all countries?

For example, Australia?

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

Yup, it is down to how Spotify license content from the labels.

[Nixmaster7]

Hi,

I'd like to get an official word from Spotify on this question too. I'm from Australia and our church has the appropriate APRA AMCOS license for publicly playing commercially-released music - so we can play a CD that would normally only be licensed for home use. The license we have covers both the public performance aspect and the reproduction required by device caching.

I asked APRA if our license terms cover content supplied by a service like Spotify - their answer was yes, because the license agreement between the artist and us is taken care of by APRA AMCOS, and this stands in place of the standard license provided by Spotify which is only for personal use.

However I note the Spotify Usage Guidelines warn against making public "...any part of the Spotify Services or content delivered to you via the Spotify Services." There appears to be a distinction between the Content (which we are licensed for) and the Spotify Services (presumably the software application and playlist curation).

Can I get a confirmation that this is indeed the case - that even in the event of the Content being legally covered, that Spotify still does not allow it's software services to be used in a public setting?

Thanks.