The four best music services for business compared
Which background music streaming service for business to choose?
We know how busy you are as a business owner, so to make your life easier, we have put together some of the most respected players on the international market and we have highlighted some important advantages and drawbacks that you have collected on the company’s official websites as well as on comparison sites (e.g. G2, Trustpilot, etc.), blogs and magazines (e.g. Medium, T3n, etc.). Hope it will help you take the right decision.
Rockbot
Benefits
- Compatible with SONOS
- Ability to import Spotify playlists
- Price from $25 /month to $75 /month
Disadvantages
- A lot of licensed songs in the catalog, which also means a lot of effort to find and organize the few tracks you really want to play.
- 500 predefined playlists. Naming used for playlists and mood is unclear or misleading. The way they are organised is also random. So looking for the exact playlist or mood you need may take a lot of time and effort.
- Manual scheduling: Possibility to schedule different playlists during the day/week. But this is your manual work that you have to invest!
- Streaming box not mandatory, but recommended, and priced at 149 dollars.
- Advertising/messaging feature available, but there will be an additional 10 dollars per month.
- Service available only in the U.S. Businesses outside USA unfortunately cannot use Rockbot.
Who is Rockbot best for?
For U.S. owners who can afford to spend a lot of time, knowledge and attention on which songs play in the background of their business every day. Knowing which artists, genres, songs or moods best match their customer and brand/store positioning.
SiriusXM for Business
Benefits
- 100+ preset music channels
- Compatible with SONOS
- Advertising/messaging feature as an option
- Starting at 26.95 USD / month
- Free 30-day trial, no commitment
Disadvantages
- Not possible to search for songs and create your own playlist
- It is not possible to import your existing Spotify/Apple-Music/Amazon-Music/Pandora/etc playlists
- Proprietary media player mandatory to play music in your store. This piece of hardware costs 149 US dollars.
- Service available only in the U.S. International entrepreneurs cannot use it.
Who is most interested in SiriusXM for Business?
For U.S. business owners who want a radio-like in-store music service. That means little control over the music that plays in their store, but fair pricing.
SoundtrackYourBrand
Benefits
- 50 million licensed songs in the catalog
- 300+ ready-made channels
- Possibility to create own playlists and (radio-) stations
- Possibility to plan playlists and stations into a weekly calendar.
- Compatible with SONOS.
- Price: $35 /month for Essential plan; $55 /month for Pro plan (including the import of private Spotify playlists).
- No proprietary hardware mandatory, but recommended. Streaming box costs 199 €.
- Web and mobile apps.
- Service available in over 70 countries.
- 30 days free trial, no obligation to purchase.
Disadvantages
- A lot of licensed songs in the catalog, which also means a huge effort to find and organize the few tracks you really want to play.
- 300+ predefined playlists. But naming and hierarchization aren’t helpful if you need to search for the playlist you would need.
- Audio advertising & messaging feature not available.
- The import of existing playlists is only available from the Spotify platform.
- The imported playlists from Spotify will be extended automatically using an AI with songs to are “similar to” the ones of the original playlists.
- Very different prices for their proprietary hardware between the territories: 149 USD in the USA and 299 EUR in Europe.
- The most expensive subscriptions of all the industry players: 55 USD /month and per zone for their Pro subscription!
Who exactly is SoundtrackYourBrand best for?
For small business owners who want to import their private Spotify playlists and create new legal playlists in the SoundtrackYourBrand app. You should also be willing to have these imported playlists extended by SoundtrackYourBrand’s algorithms to count at least 300 tracks per playlist. In addition, the playlists are also updated with new tracks every week, slowly diluting and disappearing the first imported playlists, replaced by new mood/genre/artist-like tracks. Definitely the multi-site owners, and larger brands of chains and franchises will not want to have this solution in the hands of their employees. It is missing administrative features for operations and branding managers to control centrally and remotely what content their local staff is allowed to play or not. And no brands want their employees to access 50 million songs without filter and play the (bad, weird, offensive, not on-brand) songs they want if their flagship stores.
Soundtsuit
Benefits
- 50 million licensed songs in the catalog.
- No pre-made and generic playlists that each of your competitors can play as well. Your playlists (or stations or schedules) are fully custom (i.e. personalized and unique).
- Compatible with SONOS
- Price: $29/month for Essential plan, $39 for Pro plan.
- The imported playlists from Spotify/Deezer/Apple-Music/Amazon-Music/etc will not be extended automatically using an AI.
- No proprietary hardware mandatory. Soundsuit is compatible with all streaming devices and hardware.
- Dedicated hardware player available on request for 199 USD.
- Audio advertising & messaging feature available in Enterprise plan (on request, custom pricing).
- Centralized music management dashboard available for upper management (operations, branding, IT).
- Web and mobile apps
- Service available in more than 40+ countries, including all European countries.
- 30 days free trial, no commitment
Disadvantages
- Import of Spotify/Deezer/Apple-Music/Amazon-Music/etc playlists only available in Pro plan.
Who exactly is Soundsuit best for?
- Businesses and brands who have multiple sites and need to centrally control the music in each locations and zones.
- Businesses and brands who need to import existing playlists that reflect the identity of their brand and their target audience.
- Businesses and brands who want to benefit from the music curation performed by Soundsuit curators for top tier brands such as BoConcept, Accor Hotels, Izipizi, Porsche, Best Western, Puma, Sézane, Audi, LVMH, etc.
- Businesses and brands who want to raise the level of their customer music experience.
Conclusion
To help you decide which professional music provider suits your business and brand best, we recommend that you evaluate these key decision criteria when it comes to broadcasting legal music in your one or man business locations:
- the local control you need over the music (fonctions in the app)
- the central control you need over the music in the different locations and zones of your business
- the flexibility you need when it comes to playing music on different sound (hardware) systems (classical amps, wifi speakers, mobile devices, streaming-boxs, etc)
- the access to premium music selection vs. all the bad, weird, offensive, overly-played (everywhere and by everyone) songs in the world
- the budget you want to invest per location and zone (especially if you have many to power with legal music)
- the licensing perimeter you need (in how many countries do you have operations today ? and tomorrow?)
If you would like to assess even more music services for businesses that we did in this article, you can refer to this detailed comparison, features by features, benefit by benefit, of 10 renown services on a global scale: The 10 Best Music Services for your Business.
Have a good research in choosing the right provider for you, and take advantage of the free trial most of them offer. Good luck and improve the customer experience in your business through custom music!