Public Performance Rights

Audiodrome Toggle Info   |   Last Updated: March 25th, 2026   |   4 min read   |   Glossary

Audiodrome is a royalty-free music platform designed specifically for content creators who need affordable, high-quality background music for videos, podcasts, social media, and commercial projects. Unlike subscription-only services, Audiodrome offers both free tracks and simple one-time licensing with full commercial rights, including DMCA-safe use on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. All music is original, professionally produced, and PRO-free, ensuring zero copyright claims. It’s ideal for YouTubers, freelancers, marketers, and anyone looking for budget-friendly audio that’s safe to monetize.

Public performance rights are the rights to perform a musical work in public or to transmit it to the public. In practical licensing work, they cover uses like live shows, broadcast, in-store music, venue playback, and many kinds of streaming or public-facing playback of songs.

Quick facts:
Also called: performance rights, performing rights, public performance license rights
Applies to: songs, broadcasts, venues, businesses, livestreams, digital transmissions
Used for: clearing public use of music in commercial and public-facing settings
Not the same as: sync rights, master use rights, mechanical rights, or blanket permission for every music use.

Example:
A café plays music over its speakers for customers throughout the day. That is a public performance of musical works, so the business needs the right public performance coverage for that use.

Gotchas:

  • Public performance rights attach primarily to the musical work – the song itself – and that is different from rights in the sound recording. In the U.S., the public performance right for sound recordings is limited and does not work the same way as the performance right in musical compositions.
  • A sync license does not replace public performance clearance. Sync covers pairing music with visuals, while public performance covers the later public use or transmission of the work.
  • Streaming, broadcasting, venue use, and in-business playback can all trigger performance-rights issues even when nobody is performing live in the room. Public transmission counts too.
  • Client work can create performance-rights exposure after delivery. A video, event, stream, app, venue system, or branded experience may still need the right performance-side clearance depending on how the music is used publicly.

FAQs

They cover performing a musical work in a public place or transmitting it to the public through channels such as broadcast, digital services, and other public-facing uses.

No. Public performance rights cover public use or transmission of the song, while sync rights cover using music with visual content. Many projects need more than one right.

Yes. Venues, shops, restaurants, gyms, broadcasters, websites, apps, and other businesses that use music publicly often need performance-rights coverage.

No. That distinction matters. In the U.S., musical works have a broad public performance right, while sound recordings have a narrower performance right tied to digital audio transmissions.

Related terms

Synchronization Rights • Sound Recording Rights • Mechanical License • PRO • One-Stop Clearance • Commercial Clearance • Rights-Cleared Audio • Public Performance License