Allowing students to legally listen to music during lessons

[David44]

Our SEND department want to allow select students to listen to music and/or noise (white noise etc.) to see if it helps them concentrate in class. As you can imagine, there are many technical and legal considerations around this. We have an IT Department of course, but no legal department so the whole lot has come the way of IT.

 

The music would be of the students choice (pre-chosen and approved, about 5 tracks each, not just whatever they happen to want to listen to on the day), they could then listen to any of their chosen and approved tracks when a teacher allows it during a lesson, when doing written work for example. Their choice is likely to be something from the hit parade, so we can't just give them random royalty free music.

 

Each student has a Chromebook so that would be how they listen to the music. They would be listening via headphones.

 

I wonder if anyone has done something similar and how you achieved it both technically and legally.

 

We have had a look at Sound Track Your Brand (https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/music-for-schools/) but that doesn't seem to quite fit with our needs. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who does use it for something similar to what we have planned.

 

The school has a PRS license but as the students would be using headphones, I am not sure how relevant that is anyway.

 

I wonder if we just asked the parents to purchase tracks from Amazon or similar (and reimbursed them) and the MP3 files (I assume that is what you get when you purchase music) were then put on the students school Google Drive where only they would have access to them, would that be legally sound? The music would be being purchased and used for personal use only, albeit on a school device. The Chromebook would just be acting as an MP3 player essentially.

 

Any thoughts, advice and experiences appreciated.

 

David.

Edited February 17, 2023 by David44
Better title

[Rob_D]

Straight up, the whole concept sounds like a recipe for trouble, on a classroom and behavior management level. Not to mention the potential problems around "othering" already at-risk kids if this happening in regular lessons where no-one else using their Chromebooks.

 

I can't think this would fall foul of any broadcast licensing as it's individual users, one person listening on their own isn't even going to fall foul service end user agreements.

 

Consider looking into Spotify Kids as it looks like you can use the "adult controls" to lock this down pretty hard. Or, if your webfiltering supports it, perhaps a YouTube playlist that you control. Then you don't need to worry about buying/licensing anything.

If the school is willing to reimburse the parents then why not just get the school to buy the tracks off amazon themselves? Then there's no question of ownership, it's the school's music on the school's device. Also the school ends up building up a small library of music that might be useful elsewhere (or for other students in the future).

 

If it were me, I'd probably be looking at something like this, https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01NGTNJWE/ Less to potentially go wrong, less chance of "othering" the student, not much they can to do get distracted on it, and less temptation to keep a copy of the music when they leave/the scheme ends (but some of that may just be me coming form a school without 1:1 devices).

[Aprice]

Don't see any problem arising legally,

If it stays manageable at 5 songs then just a cheap MP3 player.

[hardtailstar]

The school I worked at, the SEND kids all had their own MP3 player which they were responsible for charging/uploading music.

 

The school made the parents sign an agreement that they were responsible for the MP3 players which including uploading legally gained music.

 

Not sure how they managed it after that but during lessons the MP3 player had to be out on desk so it was clear that they were listening to that and not phone etc.

[dhicks]

Each student has a Chromebook so that would be how they listen to the music. They would be listening via headphones.

 

You should be able to set protected access to YouTube from the Google admin console, so pupils can see only videos that have been approved by a member of staff (any pupil / any member of staff - I don't think the system had any facility for setting up groups or anything). Sorry, I can't remember where the appropriate setting is or exactly what it's called - it'll be in an OU somewhere on the admin console. If pupils will have Chromebooks out on the desk during lessons to listen to tracks then staff can see what they're playing. We have Chromebooks where the screens can flip all the way back, "tent" mode is quite handy for this kind of thing. If you want to point pupils at a handy playlist of white noise tracks then you can put a bunch of links in a simple Google Sites page.

[dafyddf]

I Like Music do a school-specific streaming service. Pricing wasn't horrendous iirc.

[PotNoodleTech]

Hmm one way around this could be to use some internal only radio station streaming software and just set up a playlist with 5 tracks on repeat for each pupil and mandate a shortcut directly to the playlist on their Chromebook?

 

That would be a technical way of solving it without it being too cumbersome. As for a legal way of solving it, as the OP mentioned we are not lawyers or solicitors we're just poor overworked IT bods, so I won't give any advice other than - as far as I am aware no matter what licences you have - the school would still need to own the music, each track i.e either buy the cd or pay for the download on itunes or whatever.

[Bill8]

This could cause issues with exams, if this becomes their "normal way of working". I advise your Exams Officer seeks clarification first, before you even start the process.

[Mrpower]

Back in the deep dark past, I set up a Local network streaming radio station using Icecast https://icecast.org/ I had it running on one of those all in one Mini PC's on Windows 7. Alternatively you could try Jellyfin and build a jellyfin server https://jellyfin.org/. Both can be accessed on a web browser or on program specific software (jellyfin player).

I have a jellyfin server running at home for streaming my dvd and music collection. As the software requires account to access the media, it would keep the un-invited out of the server. As I am sure there will be lots of "why do they, get to listen to music and I can't?" questions from other pupils. The server tell you who login and from what device or software, which is handy.

[GrumbleDook]

You should be able to set protected access to YouTube from the Google admin console, so pupils can see only videos that have been approved by a member of staff (any pupil / any member of staff - I don't think the system had any facility for setting up groups or anything). Sorry, I can't remember where the appropriate setting is or exactly what it's called - it'll be in an OU somewhere on the admin console. If pupils will have Chromebooks out on the desk during lessons to listen to tracks then staff can see what they're playing. We have Chromebooks where the screens can flip all the way back, "tent" mode is quite handy for this kind of thing. If you want to point pupils at a handy playlist of white noise tracks then you can put a bunch of links in a simple Google Sites page.

 

Use of school accounts for YouTube within schools has to rely on getting consent from parents. It is an additional service and not part of the core offering. If limiting by approval, that should be to set accounts/users, if I remember correctly ... YouTube is not a route I would go down.