Your question
I want to play music in my hotel from an app that i created. I don't have right of the music. Can I get into legal issues? How does that work?
Yes. If playing the music in the hotel amounts to a public performance and you do not have the copyright owner’s licence, it may infringe copyright. The Act specifically provides that a person who permits a place of public entertainment to be used for a public performance of a literary or musical work can infringe copyright where that performance is infringing. 1
Creating your own app does not itself give you rights to use music owned by others. The supplied provisions identify a limited route for making records, requiring prior authorised retail records, prescribed notice to the copyright owner, and prescribed royalty payments. That route concerns manufacturing records for retail or resale, not ordinary hotel playback through an app. 26
The supplied exceptions do not establish a general exception for playing unlicensed music in a hotel. They address matters such as broadcasting organisations’ temporary reproductions, news and certain public speeches, and genuine demonstrations of playback equipment to clients. 34
For the provision concerning a place of public entertainment, there is an exception where the person allowing the use of the place did not know, and had no reasonable grounds to suspect, that the performance infringed copyright. Whether a hotel is such a place, whether the particular app use is a public performance, and which licences may be needed are not determined by the supplied extracts. 1
Verified sources
Where this answer comes from
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
owner of the copyright, does or causes any other person to do, in Namibia, any act which the owner has the exclusive right to do or to authorise. (2) Without derogating from the generality of subsection (1 ), copyright in a work shall be infringed by a person who, without the licence of the owner of the copyright - (a) imports into Namibia an article for a purpose other than for his or her private and domestic use; (b) sells, lets or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire in Namibia an article; (c) distributes in Namibia an article for the purposes of trade, or for any other purpose, to such an extent that the owner of the copyright in question is prejudicially affected; or (d) a...
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
(1) The copyright in a musical work shall not be infringed by a person (in this section referred to as the “manufacturer”) who makes a record of the work or of an adaptation thereof in Namibia, whether from an imported disc, tape, matrix or otherwise, if - (a) records embodying the work or a similar adap tation of the work were previously made in or imported into Namibia for the purposes of retail sale and were so made or imported by, or with the licence of, the owner of the copyright in the work; (b) before making the record the manufacturer gave the prescribed notice to the owner of the copyright of his or her intention to make it; (c) the manufacturer intends to sell the record by retail...
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
(5) The copyright in a literary or musical work shall not be infringed by the reproduction of such work by any broadcasting organisation by means of its own facilities where that reproduction or a copy thereof - (a) is intended exclusively for lawful broadcasts of such broadcasting organisation; and (b) is destroyed before the expiration of a period of six months immediately following the making of the reproduction, or such longer period as may be agreed to by the owner of the relevant part of the copyright in the work: Provided that where such reproduction is of an exceptional documentary nature, it may be preserved in the archive of the broadcasting organisation, but shall, subject to the...
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
(8) No copyright shall subsist in - (a) the official text of any work of a legislative, administrative or legal nature, or an official translation thereof; (b) a speech of a political nature or a speech delivered in the course of judicial proceedings; or (c) publications or broadcasts of news of the day, but the author of speeches referred to in paragraph (b) shall have the exclusive right of making or publishing a collection thereof. (9) Subsections (1) to (7) shall apply also with reference to the making or use of an adaptation of a work. (10) Subsections (6) and (7) shall apply also with reference to a work or an adaptation thereof which is transmitted in a diffusion service. (11) Subsect...
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
(6) For the purposes of this Act the following provisions shall apply in connection with the publication of a work: (a) Subject to paragraph (e), a work shall be deemed to have been published if copies of that work have been issued to the public with the consent of the owner of the copyright in that work in sufficient quantities to reasonably meet the needs of the public, having regard to the nature of the work. (b) Publication of a cinematograph film or sound recording is the sale, letting, hire or offer for sale or hire, of copies thereof. (c) A publication shall not be treated as being other than the first publication by reason only of an earlier publication elsewhere within a period of 3...
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994
(b) the records referred to in paragraph (a) of sub section ( 1) were made or imported by, or with the licence of, the owner of the copyright in the literary work; and (c) the conditions specified in paragraphs (b) and (d) of subsection (1) are fulfilled in relation to the owner of that copyright, the making of the record shall not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the literary work. (3) For the purposes of this section an adaptation of a work shall be deemed to be similar to an adaptation thereof embodied in a previous record if the two adaptations do not differ substantially in their treatment of the work, either in respect of style or, apart from a difference in number, in r...