Phone On Hold Legalities / Licensing

There are numerous governing bodies which represent music artists and songwriters for the right to broadcast and copy many audio works.

These include One Music New Zealand whom charge licence fees to businesses for playing the radio or commercially released music on hold.

From a phone on hold point of view, these entities define these charges predominantly based on how many External Phone lines your business has and number of separate office sites. Typically fees can range from $200 to in excess of $1000+ per year. These charges are applicable regardless of whether you have traditional telephone lines coming into your business or if you are running your phone system over the internet (known as VoIP or cloud phone system). An example of this a CISCO VOIP, Broadsoft, MS Teams, 3CX, RingCentral, hosted cloud, YeaLink or Microsoft Link messages on hold system.

On Hold License - does my business need one?

There are also copyright, licensing and broadcasting constraints permitting your business from playing certain recorded content.

The best news is that all messages recorded and licence free on hold music supplied by Evolved Sound for telephone playback will not occur any additional fees. In these situations we cover all the specific licensed usage in the context of telephone on hold content delivery, eliminating your legal requirement to pay any ongoing fees to these governing bodies. This can result in significant yearly savings, particularly when multiple external lines or office locations exist compared to playing commercial music or the radio on hold.

If all this talk about legals, pitfalls and potential hidden costs remains unclear, please contact us for more advice.

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