Short answer: there is no single price for playing music in a business in Israel. The cost combines two separate rights, and the tariff depends on your venue type, its size, and how central music is to the experience. Any figure you find online is at best a reference point, and the binding rate has to come from the rights bodies themselves.

Two rights, two payments

Playing recorded music for customers touches two entirely different rights. The first is the copyright in the work itself (composition and lyrics), managed in Israel by ACUM. The second is the rights in the recording (the phonogram), managed by bodies such as IFPI Israel, PIL, EILAM and Eshkolot. Each right is priced and billed separately, so a business can receive more than one invoice.

ACUM tariffs by business type

ACUM publishes public tariffs by business category. These include separate tariffs for restaurants and cafes (T002), pubs and bars (T003), shopping centers and malls (T010), and background music at business events (T016/2).

A few previously reported figures, for order of magnitude only [VERIFY current rates with ACUM]: an annual tariff for a four-star hotel was reported around 9,169 ILS and for a five-star hotel around 16,446 ILS, and a minimum tariff for background music at a business event for up to 50 people was reported around 60 ILS before VAT. These numbers may be outdated, so do not rely on them without direct confirmation.

ACUM's guiding principle is the "incidental" test: the more central music is to the venue, the higher the tariff. A pub or club where music is the point sits higher than an office where music is incidental.

Recording rights, billed separately

Even after arranging ACUM, recording rights are a separate matter. The recording-rights bodies charge their own fee, and the legal responsibility sits with the business owner, not the employee who built the playlist. Enforcement letters to small businesses are not rare.

For the full licensing structure see the guide to music licenses for a business in Israel, and for cost estimates the business music license cost guide.

What about a personal Spotify account?

A personal Spotify or Apple Music account is licensed for personal use only and does not cover commercial playback in a business. It does not solve ACUM or recording rights; it adds a breach of the service's terms on top. See the guide to Spotify, YouTube and radio in a business.

How BGplay replaces all of this

BGplay streams an original catalog whose rights are already cleared. That means no separate ACUM fee, no recording-rights fee, and no enforcement-letter risk. Instead of several variable invoices, there is one flat price of ₪9.90 per month (or ₪82.90 per year), legal, royalty-free, curated by venue type and time of day.

Legal, royalty-free background music for your business. Start free with BGplay