Do you need a music licence for a pub quiz?

If your quiz plays recorded music to the room, for an intro round, a name-that-tune round or anything else, you will usually need TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS. Their page for pubs and bars names "using music segments in your quiz" as one of the things the licence is for.

If your music round is questions about music, read out with nothing played, then no music is being played and the question does not arise.

This page is about the UK, where PPL PRS issues the licence.

If the pub plays background music, has a jukebox or puts music on through the TV, it almost certainly has TheMusicLicence already. The question is not whether you have one, it is whether yours covers what the quiz does.

The licence is set up around how you use music, and a quiz is a different use from background music. PPL PRS says it can amend the music usage on an existing licence to cover an event, and that a venue without a licence can get a temporary permit for one.

So the job is a phone call or a form, not a new licence. Do it before the first music round, not after somebody asks.

A hired quizmaster who turns up with a laptop full of song intros is playing music in your premises. In a pub, it is the pub's licence that needs to cover that, so check yours before the first night with a new host rather than assuming they have sorted it.

Put it in the short email you agree with the host before they start: whether they play music, and whether your licence covers it. The guide to hiring a quizmaster lists the other things worth agreeing.

TheMusicLicence pays the people who wrote and recorded the music. It does not change the terms of whatever you are playing it from.

Spotify's terms, for example, give an account holder permission for personal, non-commercial use. Playing a quiz round to a pub from a personal account is outside that, whatever licence the pub holds. Business music services exist for exactly this, and the same check applies to any streaming service you use.

PPL PRS publishes cost examples rather than a single price, because the fee depends on how you use music and how big the room is. Its pubs and bars page gave background music as starting from 91p a day, with the note that its examples were correct as of November 2026 and subject to change.

Quiz use is priced as its own use. The quickest way to an exact figure is to ask PPL PRS directly, with your room size and how often the quiz runs.

Plenty of good music rounds play no music at all. Name the band from the album. Which decade was this number one. Finish the song title. Who had the Christmas number one in a given year.

They are quicker to run than clip rounds, because nothing has to be replayed, and they work in a loud room where a clip would be lost. The free music questions on this site are written that way, and so is the music pack built into PubTrivia, which plays no recordings.