Finding the right music for your spa is absolutely crucial in creating a relaxing atmosphere for your clients. Here, we’ll take you through the best ways to find music for your spa in 2024.
Despite the opinions of many, choosing music for your spa sessions is actually quite a nuanced task.
It involves analyzing a myriad of factors such as cost, flexibility, ease of management, as well as understanding the legalities of playing music in your spa.
It also comes with knowing how much control you want to have over the music in real-time. Do you want to curate everything to the smallest detail, or do you want to let the music play in the most agreeable and relaxing manner?
Before you choose your music, be clear as to where you want this music to be played.
A large application of spa music is the waiting room for clients, which typically involves more “default” ambient music.
However, there is much more flexibility in how you curate the musical experience of the spa session itself.
Before we jump into the various ways of finding the perfect spa music, let’s go over some quick things to know on the legal side.
In order to play music in any business, the business must pay out a license fee to the various performing rights organizations (PROs).
The primary PROs in the U.S. are ASCAP and BMI, and sometimes you may encounter SESAC.
It’s important to know that unless music licensing is included in whichever avenue you pursue, you will have to obtain licenses from the PROs, which can range from around $250 each at the low end to over $1200 each, depending on how the music is used (fines for violating this can be extremely expensive so be sure to take this seriously).
However, if your spa in the U.S. is less than 2,000 square feet, you can apply for a license exemption for ASCAP and BMI. This said, evaluate your spa’s situation from this standpoint as you continue reading.
And if you’re looking for the most cost-efficient spa music provider, click here.
With all of that in mind, here are the top 3 ways to find the perfect music for your spa.
If you’re on board with paying yearly licenses (or you’re exempt from them), streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and others are a great way to find music for your spa.
You can rely on editorial spa playlists curated by the editorial team at each platform (Spotify’s are particularly good), or you can browse through user generated playlists until you find something to your taste.
In general, the quality of music you find in these playlists is pretty good. Most of the music in these playlists is your classic ambient spa vibe, although almost every listen of a playlist will include very distracting musical elements, such as hyper-consistent rhythmicality (this is good for clubs, not spas), or poorly mixed instruments.
The amount of times we’ve encountered “relaxing” spa playlists that have pianos obnoxiously loud in the mix is quite surprising and remarkably unpleasant.
This is an unfortunate fact of the bulk of spa music out there. It’s just not composed with true relaxation in mind.
And on top of this, you encounter the issue of music repetition. It’s typically unrelaxing for spa clients to be “recognizing” the music they’re listening to, and it’s especially tedious for the masseuse/staff to hear the same songs looping day after day.
Here is an example of something I came across on YouTube, which has a lot of these not-so-ideal characteristics I’m referring to:
However, most people have experience with a streaming platform of some sort, so this can be an easier solution, especially if you can get an exemption from license fees.
Now let’s go over some better options.
What if you could stream only selected spa music and not have to pay extra licenses?
This is what spa music libraries offer.
Several companies offer the ability to stream their own spa music right from their application, and because they offer licensing in their service agreement, you can stream their music for much less than having to pay PRO license fees.
At face value, this sounds like a perfect offer.
But ultimately, these libraries suffer from the same issues that editorial playlists do.
They contain what we’ve found has become “standard” spa mixing, which again is poor treatment of instrument balance, a tedious rhythmical nature, and of course, due to their playlist format, frequent repetition of the same music.
So while these are quite cost efficient, they still have drawbacks that can poorly impact your client’s experience, as well as your masseuse’s well-being during those long shifts.
Let’s jump into our top pick.
What if there was a way to save money by bypassing PRO licensing, and also play music that never got repetitive, and possessed all of the qualities of truly relaxing spa music?
This point may be a bit biased - we’ve spent the last year working on a platform that addresses these issues, but we’re proud to say that we’re confident in our final product.
Meristream is a platform from which you can stream music for your spa at a fraction of the cost of even the main spa music libraries, and it never gets old and possesses truly relaxing musical qualities.
This is because when you play music from the Meristream console in your web browser, ambient spa music is being created live, in real-time, and will constantly generate new combinations of relaxing sounds forever.
Meristream’s music will never repeat itself, because it’s designed using complex probability models which don’t allow the music to directly repeat.
You’ll get a constant, never ending stream of the most relaxing spa music on the market.
If you want to give it a shot, click here to sign up for a free 7-day trial. Cancel at any time if you’re not fulfilled with the music, and you won’t be charged.
