Do you need a music licence for your hair salon in Canada? SOCAN, Re:Sound and the radio exception

At some point, every Canadian salon owner gets the question from an accountant, a landlord or a letter in the mail: do you actually have a licence for the music playing in your salon? It sounds absurd the first time. You pay for the music, the speaker and the electricity; surely the playlist running while you foil a client is your business. Under Canadian copyright law, it is not quite that simple: music audible to your clients is a public performance, and public performances of recorded music normally need a licence, invoiced these days by an organization called Entandem.

This guide covers the whole picture for a Canadian hair salon: why the law treats salon music differently from the music in your car, who SOCAN, Re:Sound and Entandem are, what the tariffs actually cost (with the awkward truth that several of the current rates are filed but not yet certified), the genuinely useful radio exception in the Copyright Act, why a personal Spotify account is not a loophole, and what realistically happens if you ignore all of it. Everything below rests on primary sources, the Copyright Act, the Copyright Board of Canada and the collectives' own tariff texts, checked in October 2026. This blog belongs to ViteUneCoupe, a free online booking page for hair salons with 0% commission, and we apply the same rule to music tariffs as to software pricing: real figures, dated, sources linked.

Two scope notes before we start. First, unlike sales tax or employment rules, copyright is federal law, so for once there is no province-by-province table: the same rules apply from Victoria to St. John's, Québec included. Second, this is general orientation, not legal advice; if Entandem or SOCAN has already contacted your salon, read this, then talk to a lawyer or simply call them back, because the numbers involved are smaller than the stress suggests.

Why salon music is a "public performance" in Canada

Canadian copyright law gives rights holders control over the performance of their work "in public". A hair salon is open to the public, so the moment recorded music is audible to clients, two separate sets of rights are engaged:

• The musical work: the song as written, the rights of songwriters, composers and publishers. In Canada these performing rights are administered by SOCAN.
• The sound recording: the specific recorded performance you are playing, the rights of performers and record labels. Canadian law calls this "equitable remuneration", and it is administered by Re:Sound.

Both layers exist on every commercial track, which is why paying one collective never settles the whole bill. And none of the intuitive defences work: it does not matter that the music is quiet background sound, that you bought the album or pay for a streaming subscription, that nobody is charged to listen, or that your salon is small. Buying music buys private listening. Playing it for the public is a separate right, licensed separately, and that split is the entire reason this topic exists.

If you are working through the legal setup of a new salon, this belongs on the same checklist as your registrations and insurance: our guide to opening a hair salon in Canada covers the rest of that list, and salon insurance in Canada sits right next to this item.

Who are SOCAN, Re:Sound and Entandem?

For years, a Canadian business playing background music dealt with two invoices from two collectives. Since July 2019, SOCAN and Re:Sound have run a joint venture called Entandem (entandemlicensing.com, checked in October 2026) that licenses businesses for both layers in a single transaction. In practice:

The rates themselves are not set by the collectives alone: they file proposed tariffs with the Copyright Board of Canada, which reviews and certifies them. That detail matters more than it sounds, because for background music the Board is years behind, and a salon owner reading rate figures online needs to know which ones are actually approved. Let's take the two tariffs one at a time.

SOCAN Tariff 15.A: the rate is per square metre

SOCAN's background music tariff for establishments that get their music from their own sources (a phone, a laptop, a CD player, a TV) is Tariff 15.A. The version filed for 2022-2024 sets an annual fee of $1.53 per square metre, or 14.28 cents per square foot, payable by January 31 of the year covered, with a minimum annual fee of $117.75 in all cases, and half rates for seasonal businesses operating less than six months a year (SOCAN Tariff 15.A (2022-2024), filed with the Copyright Board, checked in October 2026). The payment is accompanied by a simple report of your floor area, amounts are before tax, and late amounts bear daily interest at the Bank of Canada bank rate plus 1%.

Run the arithmetic for a real salon and one thing jumps out: almost every hair salon pays the minimum. The minimum of $117.75 corresponds to about 77 square metres, roughly 830 square feet, and most independent salons are smaller than that. A 60 square metre salon owes $117.75 for the SOCAN side of its year of music, full stop.

Now the honest caveat that most summaries skip: these figures are filed rates, not certified ones. The Copyright Board's own list of pending cases shows SOCAN Tariff 15.A as pending for 2020-2021, 2022-2024 and 2025-2027, with proceedings not yet initiated (Copyright Board of Canada, pending cases, checked in October 2026). SOCAN has also filed a 2025-2027 proposal that would raise the rate to $2.32 per square metre (21.58 cents per square foot) with a $177.99 minimum (proposed SOCAN Tariff 15.A (2025-2027), published November 2023, checked in October 2026). Until the Board certifies something, the practical takeaway for a salon budget is: plan around the minimum fee at the filed rates, somewhere between roughly $118 and $178 a year for the SOCAN side, and treat the exact figure on your Entandem invoice as the current answer.

Re:Sound Tariff 3.B: the recording side of the same music

The second layer, the sound recordings, is Re:Sound Tariff 3.B. Here the certification lag is even longer: the most recent certified version covers 2016-2020 (resound.ca, tariffs, checked in October 2026), and later years are still before the Copyright Board.

The certified structure is pleasantly small for a salon. The primary method charges per square metre of public area per day of operation, at 0.3062 cents per square metre per day for 2020, with a minimum of $35 per establishment per year, and a flat fee where none of the measurement methods apply (Re:Sound Tariff 3.B (2016-2020), Canada Gazette, checked in October 2026). For a 60 square metre salon open 300 days a year, the formula gives about $55; many smaller salons land at or near the $35 minimum.

Because the post-2020 years are not certified, treat the Re:Sound side with a margin: the certified figures above are the last approved numbers, newer proposals exist, and your Entandem invoice is again the operative answer. Order of magnitude, a typical independent salon licensing both layers directly is paying somewhere around $150 to $250 a year, before tax, for unlimited background music from any source. Compared to almost any other line in a salon budget, it is small, which is exactly why ignoring it is a bad trade (more on that below). Speaking of tax: tariff amounts are exclusive of GST and HST, the same taxes we untangle in our guide to GST, HST and PST for a hair salon in Canada.

The radio exception: the one genuinely free option

Here is the part of Canadian law that most salon owners do not know and that generic international articles get wrong, because it has no exact equivalent in many other countries. Subsection 72.1(1) of the Copyright Act says that for public performances "by means of any radio receiving set" in any place other than an admission-charging theatre, no royalties are collectable from the owner or user of the radio receiving set (Copyright Act, s. 72.1, checked in October 2026). The broadcaster pays instead. SOCAN's own Tariff 15.A text restates the exception verbatim, and Entandem's FAQ confirms it in plain words: you do not need a separate music licence to play AM/FM radio in your business.

So a salon that is happy with a local station, ads and all, can put an actual radio on the shelf and legally pay nothing. Three fine-print points keep that sentence honest:

• It is about a radio receiving set. An FM tuner on the counter is clearly inside the exception. Streaming the same station's web feed through an app on your phone is not obviously "a radio receiving set", so if the exception is your legal basis, use a real radio.
• Television is not exempt. SOCAN Tariff 15.A expressly covers music performed "by any means, including a television set". A TV playing music channels in the waiting area engages the tariff; the radio carve-out does not stretch to it.
• The exception is a royalty carve-out, not a blanket blessing. It is written as "no royalties collectable", which squarely answers the licence-fee question; it does not convert every other music source in the salon into radio. The moment a stylist switches from the radio to a playlist, you are back in tariff territory.

For a small salon, this is a rare thing in compliance: a complete, free, legal answer, sitting in the statute since long before streaming existed.

Can I play my personal Spotify or Apple Music in the salon?

No, and this is the trap that catches the most salons, because it feels so reasonable: you pay for Premium, the sound is great, where is the harm?

The problem is contractual on top of copyright. Spotify's Canadian Terms of Use grant "limited, non-exclusive, revocable permission to make personal, non-commercial use of the Spotify Service and the Content" (Spotify Terms of Use, Canada, checked in October 2026), and consumer music subscriptions generally carry the same restriction. Entandem's FAQ says it directly: streaming subscriptions are meant for individual use, and playing them in a commercial setting requires public performance licences. So a consumer account in a salon fails twice: it breaches the service's terms, and it performs works and recordings publicly without covering the tariffs.

Note that the tariffs do not care whose phone is plugged in. The law looks at what clients can hear in your establishment. A stylist playing her own account at her station creates the same exposure for the salon, and in a chair-rental setup the question of whose problem that is belongs in the same conversation as everything else in the arrangement; our guide to chair rental in a Canadian hair salon covers how the responsibilities get divided. The clean fix is one licensed house source and a one-line house rule about who controls it.

The supplier route: when someone else pays the tariffs for you

There is a second completely legitimate way to have on-demand music without licensing anything yourself: a background music supplier. SOCAN Tariff 16 and Re:Sound Tariff 3.A exist for companies that supply music services to businesses, and both background music tariffs step aside where the supplier pays: SOCAN Tariff 15.A states that where royalties are paid under Tariff 16, nothing is payable under Tariff 15, and Re:Sound Tariff 3.B does not apply to performances for which a background music supplier pays under Tariff 3.A.

In practice, that is the model behind business music services operating in Canada, such as Stingray Business (a Canadian company), SiriusXM Music for Business and Soundtrack: a monthly subscription buys curated, ad-free music with the licensing handled upstream. Two pieces of diligence make the difference between "handled" and "assumed":

1. Get it in writing. Ask the provider to confirm, for your specific Canadian location, that its service covers your salon's obligations under SOCAN Tariff 16/15 and Re:Sound Tariff 3.A/3.B, and keep the confirmation. Coverage terms differ between providers and change over time, and we could not verify current Canadian prices for these services at the time of writing, so compare quotes yourself.
2. The subscription covers its own music only. If the supplier's stream plays in the salon but a stylist's playlist takes over at 4pm, the exposure returns. One source, consistently used.

The choice between paying Entandem directly (any source you like, roughly $150 to $250 a year at the figures above) and a supplier subscription (typically more per year, but curated and ad-free, licensing bundled) is a genuine trade-off, not a trick question. What matters is that both are real answers, and "my Premium account" is not.

What happens if you just ignore it?

Honestly: some salons play unlicensed music for years and hear nothing. Entandem cannot visit every storefront in the country. But hair salons are not a hypothetical target; they are a named one. Back in 2007, SOCAN ran a letter campaign specifically notifying hair salons across Canada of their royalty obligations for background music (a law firm's account of the campaign), the year after it did the same to dental offices. Today that outreach comes from Entandem, and the usual sequence is letters and calls offering a licence at the ordinary rate.

The legal backstop is what makes ignoring the letters a bad bet. Where royalties under an approved tariff go unpaid, subsection 38.1(4) of the Copyright Act lets a collective society recover statutory damages of three to ten times the applicable royalties (Copyright Act, s. 38.1, checked in October 2026), and the tariffs themselves add daily interest on late amounts plus an audit right over your books. Multiply a few years of unpaid fees by up to ten and add the legal costs, and the arithmetic is lopsided: the compliant answer costs roughly what one colour client pays in a year.

That is the frame we would suggest for the whole topic: not fear, arithmetic. Music licensing is one of the cheapest compliance items a salon has, and one of the few with a legitimately free option. We make the same predictable-line-item argument about software in our breakdown of the real cost of salon software in Canada, and it is the logic ViteUneCoupe's own free plan is built on: unlimited online bookings, 0% commission permanently, your booking page and client database at zero dollars, so the money stays available for the line items that genuinely have to be paid.

Which option fits your salon?

Whichever row is yours, write the decision down once: what plays in the salon, from which device, under which legal basis, and who may change it. That single paragraph costs nothing, ends the daily phone-plugging negotiation, and is exactly what you will want on file if a letter ever arrives.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a licence to play music in my hair salon in Canada?

Usually yes, for any recorded music from your own sources: SOCAN Tariff 15.A covers the musical works and Re:Sound Tariff 3.B the sound recordings, both invoiced together by Entandem. The one broad exception is an actual AM/FM radio: under subsection 72.1(1) of the Copyright Act, no royalties are collectable from the owner or user of a radio receiving set outside admission-charging theatres.

How much does a music licence cost for a small Canadian salon?

At the figures on file in October 2026: the SOCAN side is $1.53 per square metre per year with a $117.75 minimum as filed for 2022-2024 (a 2025-2027 proposal would raise that to $2.32 and $177.99), and the last certified Re:Sound background music tariff carries a $35 minimum. Most independent salons land near the minimums, so plan on the low hundreds of dollars per year before tax, and treat your Entandem invoice as the current answer, because several of these rates await Copyright Board certification.

Is playing the radio in my salon really free?

Yes, on the licence-fee side. Subsection 72.1(1) of the Copyright Act provides that no royalties are collectable from the owner or user of a radio receiving set in a place like a salon, and Entandem's own FAQ confirms no separate licence is needed for AM/FM radio in a business. Use a real radio rather than a station's app or web stream, and remember television is not included in the exception.

Can I use my personal Spotify account for salon music?

No. Spotify's Canadian terms permit personal, non-commercial use only, so salon use breaches the contract, and it also leaves the public performance tariffs unpaid. The legal routes are licensing via Entandem and playing whatever you like, or subscribing to a business music supplier whose service covers SOCAN Tariff 16 and Re:Sound Tariff 3.A for your location.

Are the rules different in Québec?

Not for music licensing. Copyright is federal law in Canada, so SOCAN, Re:Sound, Entandem and the radio exception apply identically in every province and territory, Québec included. That makes this topic a rare exception to our usual advice that Québec salons need separate guidance.

Does ViteUneCoupe handle music licensing?

No. ViteUneCoupe is online booking software for hair salons: the free plan includes unlimited online bookings with 0% commission and your own booking page, and the Standard plan, from 29 € per month excluding tax with no commitment, adds email confirmations, reminders and thank-you messages plus calendar sync. Music licensing is between your salon and Entandem or your music provider; this guide exists because our readers run salons and the letter eventually shows up.