music on hold

MaryW commented on the word music on hold

We all sort of vaguely know that because of copyright rights, one can’t just hook up any old audio source to the music-on-hold (“MOH”) port of one’s telephone system. In this posting I describe the usual ways that people make mistakes about MOH and the new approach that our patent law firm is trying. And I describe a way that the alert reader might win a prize.

The usual misconception about MOH (and about background music in a bar or store or restaurant) is that if it’s okay to listen to the radio in one’s home or car, surely it is okay to use a radio station as a source for music on hold in a telephone system. The radio station, after all, has surely done whatever it needs to do to obtain whatever copyright licenses are needed for the music being broadcast. What’s more, the listener is “paying” for the music by listening to advertisements.

The answer of course is no, it is not okay to use a radio station as the source for MOH. At least, not without further licensing as I will discuss below. And anyway, I have always wondered why people would be so foolish as to do so. If you are (say) a car dealership and you use MOH from a radio station, surely a competing car dealer would catch on and would blanket that radio station with ads for the competition.

March 1, 2016