Internet Radio Licensing Costs in 2026: The Real Numbers

Roughly $1,500 to $1,700 per year in minimums for a small US station playing commercial music — owed before a single listener arrives, and owed whether anyone listens or not.

That figure is two separate licences from two separate systems, and most beginner guides mention only one of them.

Why Are There Two Licences?

Because a song is two copyrights.

1. The composition — the melody and lyrics, owned by the songwriter and publisher. Licensed through a Performance Rights Organization: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or GMR.
2. The sound recording — the specific recorded performance, owned by the label or artist. Licensed in the US through SoundExchange.

Playing a track uses both. Clearing one does not clear the other, which is the single most common misunderstanding among people starting a station.

What Are the 2026 Rates?

These are not negotiated prices. They are set in federal regulation — 37 CFR § 380.10, under the statutory licence at 17 U.S.C. § 114 — so you can read the exact figure rather than trust a summary.

The minimum is recouped against the per-performance royalty — you pay the greater of the two, not both. But for a small station the minimum is almost always the number that binds, which means you are paying a fixed fee for an audience you may not have yet.

One detail almost every guide gets wrong, including an earlier version of this one. You will see figures of $1,100 rising to $1,250 quoted for 2026–2030. Those are real, but they are the Web VI rates from the SoundExchange–NAB settlement, and they apply to broadcasters simulcasting an over-the-air signal — not to a webcaster starting a station from nothing. If you are reading this because you want to start streaming, § 380.10 is your row: $1,000 and $0.0025.

And a detail nobody mentions at all: the money is not one fee. The Collective credits 5% of every payment as covering ephemeral reproductions — the server-side copies a stream necessarily makes — and the remaining 95% to the § 114 performance royalty. It changes nothing about what you owe, but it explains why the licence covers both "playing" and "copying" when people expect two separate bills.

How Does the Per-Play Rate Add Up?

One "performance" is one song played to one listener. The multiplication catches people out:

At 200 concurrent listeners running music half the day, royalties pass $32,000/year. Success is expensive in this model, and the cost scales with exactly the thing you were hoping for.

Who Pays Nothing?

Three categories are clear of music royalties entirely. As Caster.fm's licensing guide puts it:

"Stations focused on royalty-free, self-produced, or talk content pay nothing."

The reason is structural rather than a concession: the statutory licence at 17 U.S.C. § 114 attaches to a sound recording. No recording, no licence, no fee.

1. Talk stations. Speech is not a licensed sound recording. Interviews, commentary, readings, call-in shows — no PRO fee, no SoundExchange fee.
2. Self-produced music. If you wrote and recorded it, you are the rights holder.
3. Public domain and CC0. Expired copyright, or explicitly waived. Narrower than most people think — see where to find audio you can legally broadcast.

Student and noncommercial educational webcasters get a much lower bar: SoundExchange's own 2024 memo put it at $700 per station, covering the first 159,140 aggregate tuning hours a month.

Is There a Way to Reduce the Cost Without Going Talk-Only?

A few, in rough order of practicality:

1. Use a platform that holds a blanket licence. Some hosts bundle licensing into their subscription — check whether it covers your territory and your listener count, because bundled licences usually have caps.
2. Broadcast noncommercially and apply for the educational rate, if you genuinely qualify.
3. Mix formats. A talk show with public-domain music between segments incurs nothing.
4. Stay under the minimum deliberately. If you are truly small, the minimum is your whole bill — but it is still $1,000+.

What does not work: assuming that a small audience means nobody notices. SoundExchange is a collecting society and reporting is a legal obligation, not an honour system.

What About Outside the US?

Different bodies, same structure. The UK routes through PRS for Music and PPL; other territories have their own equivalents. Rates and minimums vary substantially, and streaming internationally can mean owing in multiple jurisdictions.

This article covers US rates because that is where the numbers are most public and most commonly asked about. If you broadcast from elsewhere, the two-copyright structure still applies — look up your local equivalents of the PRO and the recording-rights collector.

Frequently Asked Questions About Internet Radio Licensing

Does the $1,000 minimum apply per station or per channel?

Per channel or station, and it stacks. 37 CFR § 380.10 sets the minimum at $1,000 for each one, capped at $100,000 aggregate — so running four themed streams under one brand is a $4,000 floor before the first listener arrives, not $1,000 shared between them. The cap only starts mattering at 100 channels.

Does playing public domain music clear both licences?

Only if the recording is also public domain, which is the trap. A song is two copyrights, and they expire separately. Beethoven's compositions are long out of copyright, but a 1995 orchestral recording of one is a protected sound recording with decades left — playing it owes SoundExchange even though the composition owes the PRO nothing. What you need is a recording that is itself public domain or CC0, not merely a public-domain tune. Where to find audio you can legally broadcast covers which archives clear both.

Is a podcast licensed the same way as a live stream?

No, and podcasts are harder. The statutory licence at 17 U.S.C. § 114 covers non-interactive transmissions — radio-like streams where the listener cannot pick the next track. An on-demand episode sitting in a feed is interactive by definition, so it falls outside the licence entirely. As the RIAA puts it, that authorisation "must be obtained from the record label that released the sound recording" — a direct negotiation, per track, with no published rate to rely on. This is why so many podcasts use production-music libraries instead.

My station is free and non-commercial. Do I still owe anything?

Yes. Free is not the same as unlicensed — the fee attaches to the public performance of a sound recording, not to whether you charge for it. There is a genuinely lower tier: SoundExchange's 2024 memo puts student and noncommercial educational webcasters at $700 per station, covering the first 159,140 aggregate tuning hours a month. But it has to be applied for and you have to actually qualify, and "I am not making money" is not by itself a qualification.

What happens if I just don't pay?

You lose the licence, not the obligation. The statutory rate is a bargain offered on conditions: pay and report, and you may play anything in the catalogue without asking permission. Skip it and you are not on a cheaper plan — you are outside the licence, using recordings with no authorisation at all, and exposed to ordinary infringement claims rather than a $1,000 invoice. Reporting is a legal requirement under 37 CFR Part 370, not an honour system.

The Practical Takeaway

If you are starting a station and the licensing figure just made your decision for you, that is the correct response — and it points at a specific alternative rather than at giving up.

Talk formats owe none of it. The barrier that stops most people is a music barrier, and plenty of the best niche audio — interviews, language practice, storytelling, community shows — has no music in it at all. We wrote up how to start a talk station without licensing fees for exactly that path.

Sources: SoundExchange · Caster.fm internet radio licensing guide · Radio Cult licensing bootcamp · Inside Radio: streaming royalty rates adopted