What’s The Most Affordable Option for In-Store Music?
Music is a simple but effective way for business owners to create a specific ambiance in their store, which can influence the behavior and mood of their customers.
Slow business music encourages customers to linger and look through the store more while songs in a major key sound happier to most shoppers. However, when you’re setting up the sound system for your store, where do you source your music?
You Must License Your Business Music
In the modern world, it seems easy enough to purchase a couple of wireless speakers, hook them into your smartphone or tablet, and then stream music from your favorite playlists. First, there is nuanced psychological research into tempo, mode, genre, and recognizability of music in your store that should influence your choices. Second, you cannot simply use a personal music streaming service in your retail location.
Because of how music licensing works, you must work with a music streaming service that works with commercial business entities. If you don’t, you can face legal action and steep fines. The fines for playing unlicensed music in your business (and this includes using a personal streaming account like Spotify or Apple Music) can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per song played. This can add up quickly.
Fortunately, there are several commercial music streaming services that allow you to play fully licensed, ad-free, and curated music in your business. Each commercial streaming service offers some similar options, but there are important differences between them, including price.
Affordable Streaming Music for Businesses
These major commercial streaming services offer robust libraries at affordable pricing structures. Each music-for-business streaming provider offers ad-free, business-appropriate playlists and stations as well as large libraries of music. You can also customize your own playlists that are curated to your business type, time of day, and seasonal offerings.
While prices are listed below, always check with the provider directly to ensure the most up-to-date pricing and terms.
- Stingray Music: Stingray Music was first launched in Canada as a pay TV audio service under the name Galaxie. On September 30, 2014, Stingray united all of its properties under the Stingray brand with Galaxie rebranded as Stingray Music. Today, Stingray Music has grown into a multiplatform music service with thousands of channels in every possible genre available worldwide on mobile, web, and TV.
- Soundtrack Your Brand: Soundtrack Your Brand is a digital music service that provides retail establishments with licensed playlists based on genre, mood, and business type. With the world’s largest catalog of music licensed for this use, business owners can use ready-made soundtracks or create their own personalized experience. Soundtrack Your Brand lets artists make their music available to be streamed in bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms, offices and more.
- CloudMusic Canada: This music streaming service works much like Rockbot, but is more affordable for all levels of business. With a large and growing library of legally licensed music for business, CloudMusic Canada is becoming more and more popular. CloudMusic offers a 14-Day free trial, and then, several levels of plans are available. The Multiple locations can be managed for just $27.95 CAD per month. Instore messages, so you can communicate with your customers, can be added, raising the monthly cost to just $35.95 CAD per month. If you have needs that aren’t met by these plans, Enterprise offerings can be customized and include volume and extended term discounts.
This chart breaks down the offerings of each commercial music streaming provider at a glance:
| Library | Monthly Cost | Free Trial Period | Equipment Required? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CloudMusic | 220+ business stations & huge songs library (Includes; automated scheduling, messaging, clean lyrics, public performance licenses, much more. | $27.95-$35.95 | 14 days | No |
| Soundtrack Your Brand | 200+ stations & huge songs library | $50.00-$60.00 | 14 days | NO |
| Stingray Music | 16+ stations per account | $49.95-$60.00 | 14 days | No |
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