Music for hotel lobbies has the job of welcoming guests who have probably been immersed in the sounds of travel. But how do you manage multiple zones keeping in mind your guest’s needs?
Photo by: vitroids.

Question: Why is multi zone music licensing so complex in hotels?

Answer: It doesn’t need to be anymore.

Traditionally, music royalty collection societies have needed to work out a pricing structure that matches price against use so they could fairly distinguish between small and large locations.  Ensuring their collective artists membership were gaining a reasonable earning for the use of their music, this seemed the best, albeit, the only method on offer.

However, over time the pricing structure has become more complex as the societies have broken done the hospitality business into uses defined by functional areas and the technology and media on offer within hotels has increased.

For example, most performing rights societies will price specifically for use in corridors, rooms,  karaoke, juke boxes, live performances and audio/video used within digital signage systems as well as TV and radio channels available in rooms.

How do I calculate how much I should be paying PROs for playing music in my corridors?
Photo by chrish_99.

Restaurants are priced by the number of covers and other areas may be priced according to the floor space area and other parameters making calculating all uses a complex undertaking.

So with complex pricing it has been hard for the hospitality market to keep in top of the price of licenses and if they truly reflect their own use of background music. Not only is it costly to administer there are risks involved of unknown liabilities if the hotel’s estimates differ from the collection agency’s estimates.

Additionally, with no competition since the performing rights societies are monopolies for the artists they represent, if prices are raised there were no alternatives to compare and so with no choice, customer value has been stifled.

However now, with Melody Pods providing its own curated music library designed for business background music that is not assigned to the traditional performing rights societies there is an opportunity to price more simply and make managing music use less costly.

Create playlists for different times of the day to match the mood of your clientele. Centrally managing the changes of music in your restaurants can be complex. With Melody Pods you can set up a range of playlists and adjust/refresh to keep the music matching the mood throughout the week and seasons.
Photo by taraangkorhotel.

Where you have no need for popular branded music Melody Pods now offers a simple and effective solution that can also reduce the overall cost of music use a well as avoiding complex pricing structures.

So now you can pluck out a range of music uses in your business and move across to a far simpler method of licensing and managing music use. Over multiple locations the managing of licenses becomes far less cumbersome and costs far less as well.

Added to this, Melody Pods provides distribution options that include distributing music via IT services partners as well as our own music management, distribution and playing service.

The Melody Pods’ solution also provides a simple way for each zone to get access to the music that matches their business needs so the variety of music that is needed within a hotel infrastructure can be easily distributed and simply played.

Please make contact with us today and tell us about your needs to manage music more effectively whilst keeping music quality high.