Indie artists license songs to small cafés directly and get paid per play
TL;DR Tabletune streams background music to cafés, salons and small stores from a catalogue of Indian independent artists who license their work to it directly. Venues pay one monthly fee instead of chasing several licences. If a guest likes a track they scan a card to find the artist, so musicians get both royalties and listeners.
If you play recorded music in a café in India you need permission for the recording and, separately, for the song itself. A 2025–26 run of court rulings shows how messy that gets. The Delhi High Court held in April 2025 that licensing as a business must run through a registered copyright society, PPL was re-registered only from 11 June 2026, and the Bombay and Madras High Courts disagree on one private licensing agency[1]. Penalties for unlicensed use can include jail terms and fines[2].
So what do small venues do? They stream a personal app account, which isn't licensed for business use, and hope no notice arrives. Independent artists, meanwhile, get almost no money from public play.
Tabletune signs Indian independent artists who own both their recordings and their compositions and haven't handed performing rights to a society. Each one grants Tabletune a licence for background play in businesses. Venues get a small player app with mood-based channels (morning, lunch rush, late evening) in the languages that suit their city, plus a licence certificate to show any collector who walks in.
Every table or counter gets a card with a QR code that shows what's playing and links to the artist's streaming pages. Artists are paid from a pool shared by play count, with a dashboard of which venues played them.
The seed version wanted music discovery through "neuro-aesthetic" brain profiling. I found no evidence that works for consumers outside a lab, and the big streaming apps already own personal discovery. So discovery moves into the rooms where people hear music they didn't choose, which is where an unknown artist can actually get found.
The venue pays a monthly subscription per outlet, and staff and guests are the listeners. A global music library sells a similar licence-inclusive service abroad but doesn't publish a per-location price[3]. Indian buyers will compare Tabletune with what collecting societies charge, which varies by venue type and city. Expect to price per outlet per month and test the range during validation (no public benchmark found).
The licensing ground moved in 2025–26 - a Delhi High Court ruling in April 2025, PPL's re-registration in June 2026, and a Supreme Court appeal that is still pending[1]. Venue owners are getting notices and they want certainty. At the same time, independent artists are putting out more music than ever without labels, and most of them own their rights outright.
There's no public figure for India's in-store music market. The best signal is abroad, where one global music library says over 40,000 businesses use its licence-inclusive in-store service[3]. In India, one in-store radio firm founded in 2020 already sells in-store music with a royalty-free library to retailers[4], so buyers do exist.
Indian in-store radio firms sell playlists, announcements and display management to Indian retailers[4]. A global library offers 55,000+ original tracks for businesses worldwide[3]. Collecting societies such as IPRS and PPL license their own repertoires[1].
None of them pays Indian independent artists directly per venue play or helps guests find the artist. That's the gap.
| Difficulty | Moderate (42/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹55 L–1.05 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The player app is simple. The real work is in contracts and taste - checking that each artist truly controls their rights, building a catalogue big enough that cafés don't hear repeats, and selling outlet by outlet to owners who watch every rupee.
There's no operating licence, but copyright law decides how this business can be structured.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to decide who owns a song. Rights checks need signed paperwork and a lawyer, not a model's match score.
Want to work out the AI layer for Tabletune? Talk to Yash →
I like this as a sensible, small business for someone who knows the indie scene and can read a licence. If you're hoping to scale on technology alone then look elsewhere. Prove the catalogue first - 1,500 cleared tracks from 150 artists, and 20 cafés still playing it after 60 days.
Plan for roughly ₹55 L–1.05 Cr, most of it on clearing a big enough catalogue and selling outlet by outlet.
Not an operating licence, but the Copyright Act shapes the model. Licensing others' repertoire as a business may need a registered society, so structure as the artist's licensee.
Yes, a global music library sells a licence-inclusive service abroad. Copyright and collecting society rules differ by country, so get local legal advice.
The free Tabletune validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the copyright and licensing checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for venues and artists, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Tabletune or something close to it? The make-or-break work is clearing artist rights cleanly and signing the first 20 venues, and I'm happy to think that through with you. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.