Background music for cafés. UAE and Saudi Arabia
Background music for cafés and coffee shops
Curated for your brand. Scheduled from the morning rush to closing. Every branch visible to head office. From 1 December 2026, your licence handled with you.
Updated .
The day
A café's day has a shape
Breakfast opens calm, lunch lifts the tempo, the afternoon settles, and the evening winds down.
Curated by people
Every Playlist is built from your brief by a Music Curator. One questionnaire per Zone: genres, tempo, mood by time of day, prayer time and the brand.
Reviewed for the region
Checked beyond explicit content filtering for anything that conflicts with local values or your brand.
Kept fresh
Every Zone updated as we go, as the venue and the season change.
Branches
One brand, every branch
The same sound in every branch, or a Zone of its own for the terrace and the café corner in a store.
Every Zone is monitored: live Zone status (playing, paused), player status (online or offline), remote playback control, and complete playback and log history. Head office has full visibility over all its Zones in Pulse View.
Why it matters
People stay for the music
of consumers have stayed in a store longer because they enjoyed the music.
Mood Media with Walnut Unlimited, 2019. 10,000 consumers, ten countries. Source
more revenue with music that fits the brand than with popular music that does not. Sixteen chain restaurants.
Daunfeldt, Rudholm and Sporre, HUI Research, 2017. Field experiment, Stockholm. Source
Music licensing in the UAE
Cafés from 1 December 2026
Restaurants and cafés are charged on seat count. The collector confirms your band. No exemption is listed for cafés.
Where Cloud Pulse stands
Your part, our part
Your part
- You hold the licence, in your own name.
- You choose a licensed collector: EMRA or Music Nation.
- You pay the fee for your band to the collector.
Our part
- We supply the music for business use.
- We help you through the process, at no extra charge.
- We never bill or collect performance fees.
Public performance fees are set by the Ministry of Economy and Tourism and are paid by the venue operator to a licensed collector. The fee for each location follows the published tariff band for its category, determined by the operator's own seat count or floor area and confirmed by the collector. Cloud Pulse never bills or remits these fees.
Built for the region
Prayer times, handled
Pauses and resumes
Music pauses and resumes at prayer times automatically, with pre-prayer, prayer and post-prayer windows configured to the client's requirements.
Plays through outages
Playback starts on power-up without staff involvement. Music is not interrupted by connectivity drops: the player holds a local cache and continues playing until the connection returns.
Works with any music system; compatibility is determined by the player only. Pulse App, Pulse Web, Pulse Sonos, Pulse Player, or a per-venue stream on the equipment you already have, confirmed at the site survey. The player is your choice.
Questions
What cafés ask
Can I play Spotify in my café?
No. Spotify's terms give permission for personal, non-commercial use only, on every plan. A café needs music supplied for business use, and from 1 December 2026 a licence from EMRA or Music Nation in the operator's own name. What the apps' terms say.
Does a small café need a licence?
From 1 December 2026, a venue that plays music holds a licence from a licensed collector in the operator's own name. Cafés are charged by seat count in the published tariff band. The exemptions the Ministry lists are educational institutions, government entities, national occasions and personal non-commercial celebrations.
How is a café's licence fee set?
Restaurants and cafés are charged on seat count. The fee for each location follows the published tariff band, determined by the operator's own seat count and confirmed by the collector.
We have twelve branches. Does head office see them all?
Yes. Every Zone, every player, live, with remote control and full history, in Pulse View.
What do you need from us to start?
One questionnaire per Zone: genres, tempo, mood by time of day, prayer time and the brand. We build the Playlists in two weeks from the brief. Two site visits are included: discovery, then installation and testing.
Commercial music or royalty free?
Either. Chosen per brand or per Zone, on the same platform with the same Schedules and the same support. The two options.
Sources
Where this comes from
- UAE Ministry of Economy and Tourism, Guide to Collective Management in Music, version 1.1, June 2026, adopted by Ministerial Resolution 136 of 2026, in force 1 December 2026: venue category rules and exemptions.
- Mood Media with Walnut Unlimited, The Impact of Sensory Marketing, 2019.
- Daunfeldt, Rudholm and Sporre, HUI Research Working Paper 121, 2017.
Contact
Tell us about your café
We come back with a sample Playlist and a date for the site survey.
- WhatsApp+971 58 554 6277
- Emailinfo@cloud-pulse.com
- Also forRestaurants, shops, hotels