Radio hosting with licensing included: what you’re actually buying
Some platforms bundle music licensing into your hosting subscription. Here is exactly what that covers, the four questions to ask before you buy it, and why a licence in your own name behaves differently.
Search for radio hosting and you will find two shapes of offer. Most platforms sell infrastructure and leave the music rights to you. A few fold licensing into the subscription — one bill, no forms, start playing. That second option is genuinely appealing, and for some stations it is the right call. But “licensing included” describes an arrangement, not a possession, and the difference between the two shows up at exactly the moments that matter: when you cross a border, change format, grow, or leave. This guide is the unglamorous detail underneath the checkbox.
Orientation, not legal advice
We run a streaming platform, not a law firm. Use this to know which questions to ask; confirm the answers with the platform and the licensing bodies themselves. Their published terms on the day you sign are what counts.
1. What “licensing included” actually means
The platform holds blanket agreements with the rights organizations, and your station broadcasts underneath them. You are not issued a licence; you are admitted to theirs, for as long as you are their customer and your station stays inside the shape their agreements cover. In return they handle the applications, the reporting and the payments, and you get to skip the paperwork entirely.
That is a real service and it solves a real problem. If the licensing step is the thing stopping you from starting, a bundle removes it in one click. The honest sales pitch and the honest warning are the same sentence: someone else is doing the licensing, on terms they chose, in their name.
| Bundled with hosting | In your own name | |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the agreement | The platform | Your station |
| Setup effort | None — it is switched on with the plan | An afternoon of online applications |
| Scope | The territories and uses the platform’s agreements cover | The territories and uses you applied for |
| Fits your format | Whatever the bundle assumes, applied uniformly | Whatever you actually play |
| If you change hosts | Stays behind with the platform | Comes with you |
| Who talks to the societies | The platform | You, directly |
Neither column is “the right answer”. They are different trades — convenience now against independence later.
2. Four questions before you buy the bundle
If a bundle is the route you want, these four answers are the ones worth having in writing before your first show — not because platforms are hiding them, but because the answers vary a lot and the marketing page rarely has room for them.
- 1Which countries does it cover? Licensing is territorial. Your listeners are not. Ask what happens when a stranger in a country outside the coverage presses play — whose problem is that, and what does the platform do about it?
- 2Which uses does it cover? Almost certainly the live stream only. On-demand audio — an archived show, a podcast episode with music in it — sits outside webcasting licences everywhere, bundle or no bundle. If you plan to publish shows, ask explicitly.
- 3What does it assume about my format? A bundle prices and scopes for a general music station. If you are all-talk, or built on your own recordings and direct artist relationships, you may be buying a solution to a problem you do not have.
- 4What happens on the day I leave? The coverage ends with the subscription. Ask what you would need to have in place before switching hosts — and how long those applications take — so a move is a decision rather than an emergency.
Who bundles, as of August 2026
Live365 is the platform whose bundled US licensing is its central differentiator, and its pricing reflects that — an entry tier at $59/month, with a price increase taking effect 1 September 2026. Most others — Radio.co, RadioKing, Airtime Pro, Nobex and the self-hosted stack — sell hosting and leave licensing to you. Where a platform’s position is unclear, ask them directly rather than inferring from a feature grid.
3. Why a licence in your own name behaves differently
The case for doing the paperwork yourself is not that it is cheaper or easier — it is neither. It is that the result is a different kind of object. A licence issued to your station is an asset of the station, and assets have properties that access arrangements do not.
- It travels. Change hosts, add a second delivery path, put the stream in your own app — your standing to play the music does not depend on which company is serving the bytes this year.
- It matches your actual footprint. You license for the territories your listeners are really in, and adjust as that changes, instead of inheriting somebody else’s map.
- It matches your actual format. An all-talk station, or one built on original music and direct artist deals, may need very little — or nothing. That judgement stays yours, rather than being priced in by default.
- It gives you a direct line. When your format, audience or territory changes, you talk to the people who set the terms instead of waiting for a platform to do it for you.
- It is a credential. Sponsors, syndication partners and station acquirers ask who holds the licence. “We broadcast under our host’s” is a different answer from “we hold ours”.
And the work is smaller than its reputation. For US webcasting it is four online applications — SoundExchange (via a Notice of Use filed with the Copyright Office) for the recordings, plus ASCAP, BMI and SESAC for the songwriters. Form-filling, not negotiation; the step-by-step guide walks the whole path, and the licensing explainer covers the theory underneath it.
4. Which route suits which station
| If this is you… | Bundled licensing | Your own licence |
|---|---|---|
| A hobby station, one country, general music, no plans beyond it | Good fit — it removes the only hard step | Works, but you are doing forms for a hobby |
| Building a brand you intend to still own in five years | Convenient now; the exit is the cost | Good fit — the licence is part of what you are building |
| All-talk, or your own recordings, or direct artist deals | You may be paying for coverage you do not need | Good fit — often little or nothing to file |
| Listeners across several countries | Check the coverage map carefully first | Good fit — you license for where you actually broadcast |
| An existing FM or community station going online | Duplicates agreements you may already hold | Good fit — extend what you have |
| Publishing shows on demand as podcasts | Not covered by webcasting licences either way | Not covered either — keep music off the on-demand feed |
You can start before the paperwork finishes
The two clocks run in parallel. Society applications are same-day web forms; the Copyright Office filing is the slow one. Meanwhile you can build the station, upload the library, shape the sound and rehearse shows — Nobex’s free test mode needs no card — and go live the day the licences land.
5. What the software should do either way
Whoever holds the licence, staying inside it is a programming problem, and it is the one part of this that should be automatic. Two duties run forever:
The performance complement — the statutory limits on how often you may play the same artist or album inside a rolling window, and the ban on pre-announcing exact play times. No human can hold that while programming a station, so the sequencer should. In Nobex, Cloud AutoDJ simply will not schedule a track that would break the window; tracks you flag as your own recordings are exempt, because the rules exist to protect other people’s masters.
And reporting — a clean play log with artist and title on every play, so royalty reporting is an export rather than an archaeology project. That starts with tidy library metadata on the day you upload, not the week the report is due.
6. Bundled licensing, asked and answered
Is there internet radio hosting with royalties included?
Yes. A small number of platforms hold blanket licences and let their customers broadcast underneath them — Live365 is the best-known example in the US, and its pricing reflects the bundle. Most hosts, including Nobex, provide infrastructure only and leave licensing to the broadcaster.
Is bundled licensing cheaper than getting my own?
It is simpler, which is not the same thing. The right comparison is not two prices but two positions: with a bundle you get coverage while you stay a customer, scoped to the platform’s territories and format assumptions. With your own licence you get a permanent asset in your station’s name that travels with you. Which is better depends entirely on what you are building.
Does a host’s licence cover me if I move to another platform?
No. The coverage belongs to the platform and ends with your subscription. If you plan to move, get your own licences in place first — the society applications are quick, but the Copyright Office / SoundExchange filing takes days to weeks.
Does bundled licensing cover my podcast?
Almost certainly not. Webcasting licences cover live, radio-style streaming. On-demand audio containing commercial music needs rights cleared per track directly with the rights holders — there is no blanket licence for it, bundled or otherwise. Most stations publish their talk segments and keep the music on the live stream.
What if I only play music I made myself?
Then you already hold both copyrights and need no licence at all — and a bundle is coverage you do not need. In Nobex you can flag those tracks as your own recordings, and even the sequencer’s statutory limits stop applying to them.
Why doesn’t Nobex bundle licensing?
Because the bundle would be ours, not yours — scoped to our territories, priced into formats that may not need it, and left behind the day you moved. We would rather hosting and licensing stay two separate purchases, so you can change either one without disturbing the other, and so the licence your station broadcasts under is one it owns.
Keep reading
Ready to put this into practice?
Start free and be on air in under five minutes — no software to install.
Start streaming free