Ruben Abalos, Author at Melody Pods: In Store & Client Centred Background Music, Messaging and Media Network

Why using YouTube playlists isn’t the best solution for background music in your business

May 31, 2015 by Ruben Abalos

YouTube is a great way to get hold of music quickly and simply for playing background music in your business. Connect up a TV and you have multimedia available for occupying your clients. Even though the feed is free, you still need to pay business prices.

So how can you cut the cost of music in your business yet obtain a business class service?

(courtesty RadioGaia.com)

Using commercially available music such as CDs, and mp3s from download sites you may have on iTunes or an ipod still requires you to pay performing rights licenses. But there is a way to get professional music, designed for background use, and not have to pay costly performing rights societies.

Melody Pods music is licensed internationally with no additional performing rights licenses to pay. We can do this simply because our music is either not registered with a performing rights society or is waivered from background music use.

Its likely you wont be told this when you call a performing rights society to talk to them about not paying a license. If you have used music from CDs and iTunes for example in the past, you will still need to pay for that use. But moving forward, instead of paying a new license you can simply stop now, join Melody Pods and use our music royalty free.

Our service comes with a license and a waiver document for each month you use our music. Download them as a pdf and keep them for anyone who enquires (in my experience it can take a few times before they stop enquiring and get it).

So how easy is it to get a royalty free music service up and running?

If you just want to stream to your PC and connected speakers to keep your hardware costs down then online radio streaming might also be attractive.

But are any of these solutions taking your business in mind?

With Melody Pods we have a simple streaming service where you choose online the music that works for you, press play and your selection streams to your speakers through a simple browser window (latest versions of Firefox or Chrome recommended).

Better still, grab your Android tablet and download our app to have your choice of music available locally so you aren’t risking music silences when busy broadband networks stop the music flowing.

This provides you with more flexibility than any other background music service provider today, and at a fraction of the cost.

Choose your own music, change it when ever you wish or ask us to. Create your own playlists and set music to play across your business where ever you are in the world.

With Melody Mods we have all the options covered.

Please chat to us today about your requirements.

Does your music streaming service stop when you send your emails?

May 29, 2015 by Ruben Abalos

Whilst your reception maybe busy with clients entering and leaving, it may be a similar situation with your broadband service.

With administration teams managing the operations, ordering stock supplies, sending files and documents to your accountant and having online dialogues with clients your broadband maybe very busy,

but the only time you will realise is when your streaming service takes a coffee break and stops playing because it can’t compete with the rest of the traffic on your network.

Waiting for music streaming service to start again after you have just sent your emails

How do you fill the gaps between the music playing in your business if you use a streaming service?

Are you generous and offer your clients free WiFi? They will be browsing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or other multimedia rich locations that will deluge your broadband with traffic as well.

This is why, whilst streaming services can be handy when you don’t have the budget for tablets to play music in your reception and (if your business is of this kind) your treatment rooms it will be a compromise to a business class download and play background music service.

With Melody Pods we offer both streaming and download and play service offerings.

We advise clients, if they don’t have the initial budget for tablets, to use the streaming service to get a feel for what music works for them in their environments (as long as their networks are up to streaming consistently all day).

Is offering your customers free WiFi killing your background music streaming service?

Once they are certain they have the right ambiance they can then invest in populating their business locations with tablets and get us to set up their music system to get the right music to the right parts of their business.

So why not talk to us today about how best you can get business class background music served in your

business that wont take a coffee break when things are busy, serve you with music in your receptions and serve different playlists of music in each of your treatment rooms.

Melody Pods background music on Chrome OS

May 26, 2015 by Ruben Abalos

Have you a Chrome OS laptop? Melody Pods is now available for you to use and download music for background use in your business.

Background Music For Business on Google Chrome OS

The benefit of a Chrome OS laptop is that you will have a large hard drive so will be able to download a lot of music to play.

So much so you could potentially have enough music to never hear the same piece of music for the whole working week or longer if you wish.

From a laptop (depending on which hardware you are using) you may have additional benefits such as a digital audio output using USB or ethernet connectivity to a sound amplifier and speaker system running through a large business area.

Check it out here:

Please contact us to ask for a free consultation:

Sneak Peak.. Melody Pods for Kindles

May 21, 2015 by Ruben Abalos

The Melody Pods music player is due to launch on the Amazon App Store soon.

Whilst we are awaiting final details from Amazon before launching we thought we would post up our news.

Extending the ways that you can use existing hardware to reduce the cost of playing music in your business has always been key to Melody Pods.

So now.. well.. very soon we will be able to offer full support for Kindle machines as well.

Our tests have shown our Android app works very well on the machines and has passed the compatibility test for all, although older versions do tend to be slow at responding to touch commands as you would expect.

Another device ticked off the list!

Melody Pods Streaming Service For PC/Mac

May 21, 2015 by Ruben Abalos

Well I said we would never do it but I’ve had to eat my hat. A number of clients have pleaded with us to let them play their Melody Pods music using their existing PCs and so we’ve gone to work to make this available from within the Melody Pods account and launching today.

So, login and purchase the streaming player package suitable for the number of locations you have and you will see the player option appear in the account menu. Please make sure you have the latest version of Chrome or Firefox to play the music. Other browsers including browsers on tablets are not currently compatible.

Streaming music for me has always been risky when considering a quality business service with end to end service level guarantees. Because a streaming player relies on bandwidth being available at a given time to keep the music flowing it is a less reliable way to listen to music in your business than downloading to a tablet.

But we understand some clients don’t have the budget for a tablet and want to use their existing computer hardware (by the way, we will have a few new great tricks coming hopefully soon on this anyway).

So, if you have an active local area network (LAN) with lots of other things going on such as batch updates you may find your stream struggling to keep up (although we have buffering enabled to help).

Additionally if your Internet network connection is small on bandwidth or your service provider is using a lot of active customers contending for the same bandwidth then you may risk hearing a few quiet moments while the Melody Pods streaming player waits for more music to get through.

If you are in two minds about what technical solution will be best for you then please give us a call. We have a lot of experience with telecommunications and Internet routing challenges.

Our recommendation to most clients is to go for a tablet solution because the cost of tablets, particularly Android based machines are so cheap nowadays that the return on investment you can achieve packaged up with a Melody Pods subscription can be within a year.