Music Developments
Music has increasingly become more abundant, available and commoditised as a resource for use in business. However 99.9% is still ‘stock library’ music that isn’t particularly designed for any market in mind so identifying and sourcing the right music is still a challenge because of the time it takes to audition, collate and remaster for specific customer needs. Additionally I believe we will see a healthy market of artists moving away from the low value stock library market as they realise they can add value to businesses by providing music for specific market and client needs.
Artists that are able to bridge the gap between creating professional music and what clients need for their business will be the key area of recruitment for libraries moving forward rather than building libraries of hundreds of thousands of tracks. This music will continue to be licensed within business locations as royalty free whilst the performing rights collection societies remain strong in TV broadcasting and advertising.
Additionally the music for business market is becoming saturated with streaming based service providers, many of which wont survive as they have little differentiation and have little control over the quality of delivery over public networks. They risk their clients experiencing embarrassing interruptions to the audio streams because public networks often get congested due to the increased demand from consumers using applications that consume audio and video services for example. Equally, each business’ local area network is challenged with new customer service and automation applications all vying for the same bandwidth in and out of the location.
Developments for music within Spas.
As the spa market grows and starts to see the beginnings of a saturation of brands, increasingly the players in the market will need to strengthen their brand identities and their differentiation.
Branding: music can help with brand identity. The right branded music helps to connect with clients and communicate the values a brand has. Music collections and indeed music signatures and logos can be designed to then be included in all the touch points a brand has with its clients. From reception and service, through mobile apps and online / terrestrial advertising. Getting that consistency across each touch point enables brands to strengthen their recognition and differentiation in their market place.
Personalisation: Spas increasingly need to develop the personal touch of each treatment experience. Massage Envy talk on their website about, “customis[ing] your massage session” yet music offers them ways to make their services even more distinct and more personal.
Music has a key part in helping the experience feel personal if there was more of a personal choice about what music was used in their treatments. Whilst branded treatment music is a great start there maybe clients who really just have a preference for something else. So a ‘one size fits all’ solution to a client base can only ever go so far to achieve this and so personalising the music available will be part of the development for not only the spa market moving forward.
I think Red Door Spa and Planet Beach already offer clients a choice. However their implementations have their own limits since (at least) Planet Beach use generic genre channels streams that aren’t specifically designed for the spa / relaxation market (again, a volume approach to throwing a lot of music at a wide customer market). In the UK many spas use ipods filled with music rarely updated but when they do, they end up becoming a costly admin overhead to update each with new music.