Music Licensing for Hair Salon

If you are the owner of a hair or beauty salon, you will surely be aware of the importance of background music in any business of this type.

In fact, according to a study conducted by MusicWork, it was recognized that music had a great effect on increasing the business’s revenue: 80% of the participants stated the importance of music in creating a favorable atmosphere in a hairdresser’s or beauty salon.

Similarly, in relation to this statement, 61% of hairdressers in the same study said that this favourable atmosphere was a key element in getting customers to return to the establishment more often in the future.

If you play background music from the radio, television or Youtube, in any inspection of the so-called PRO’s (Performance Rights Organizations), you will most likely be fined and have to start paying monthly fees according to its terms and conditions.

Fortunately, there are companies with options to avoid this. One of them is Soundtrack Your Brand and it’s the best we’ve tried so far:

Platform	Type of music	Price	Link
SOUNDTRACK YOUR BRAND	Well-known and famous songs	$34.99/month per location	Here
CLOUD COVER MUSIC	Well-known and famous songs	From $16.95/month per location	Here

Where to get the music?

You probably know that most music on the Internet is protected by so-called copyright.

This means that you cannot give commercial use to this music without their respective licenses, as otherwise, you would be exposing yourself to serious administrative penalties in inspections carried out in your establishments.

Below, I will explain the different options you have when it comes to getting fully legal streaming music:

1. PRO’s

The main Performance Rights Organization in each country, (BMI, ASCAP or SESAC in the US, PPL-PRS in the UK…), establishes a set of fees according to the surface area of your hairdressing salon or beauty salon.

You can check the prices of their licenses on this page for the UK, ranging from £84 to £375 depending on the seats you have and you will need as many licenses as locations.

The prices for the US are in that range too, or even more.

On many occasions, PRO licenses can be somewhat abusive and, in addition, they are precisely the ones that carry out the inspections we talked about.

That’s why I’ve introduced you to a much cheaper online platform with many more features and options:

2. Soundtrack Your Brand

The most recommended tool to manage the background music in your hairdresser’s or beauty salon is undoubtedly Soundtrack Your Brand .

It was born in 2013 by Ola Sars and Andreas Liffgarden and has the support of the company Spotify, which is one of its most prominent shareholders.

But we must not confuse the two companies.

Although Soundtrack Your Brand has long been known as Spotify for Business , it has no relationship with Spotify’s streaming service.

The only thing that unites them is that they have a partnership agreement whereby they allow their customers to sync both accounts and use Spotify playlists as a soundtrack.

Soundtrack Your Brand continuously updates its 300+ soundtracks with over 10,000 songs per day.

This makes it easy for businesses to play music without overwhelming customers or employees.

The platform also offers the following features to its customers:

What are their prices?

The price of Soundtrack Your Brand is fixed: $34.99 per month per store located in the USA and Canada.

It is worth mentioning that if your hairdresser is not in North America, the cost of the service may vary. If that is your case, we recommend you to visit their price page to know the cost in your country.

However, in case you are afraid to spend that money and then get a service that you didn’t expect and that doesn’t satisfy you, the platform offers a free trial for a period of one month without any commitment.

However, if your hair salon or your beauty center is located in other countries like Australia or the United Kingdom, you should know the following: Although Soundtrack Your Brand usually offers all the necessary rights to the music tracks, in some countries it is necessary to acquire the public performance license through the record labels, music publishers, and/or local collection societies in order to use Soundtrack Your Brand legally.

You can also find other alternatives similar to Soundtrack Your Brand, such as Cloud Cover Music – only for users in the United States and Canada, where you can find quality streaming music for your hair salon.

Why is music important in a salon?

Once the relevance of music is confirmed, the real question is: where does that significance come from?

Music is able to prevent or reduce the annoying sound of hair clippers or scissors and is also an essential element when it comes to influencing people’s moods…

And it is that, in many cases, this aspect is able to make a client who had entered a hairdresser’s or beauty salon somewhat stressed by their day to day, leave the door as happy as possible.

The relevance of music has reached such a point that there are hairdressers who have even decided to open at night and hire DJ’s to set the mood for their places and to fill them with young people cutting their hair to get ready for going out.

Even many salons have developed a strategy in this regard, choosing a particular musical genre that always dominates.

It should be remembered that in these cases, other factors must be taken into account in order for this brand image to be strong and consistent:

However, there are others who prefer to opt for a different musical genre each day and thus create different theme days in their establishments.

Regardless of the type of strategy you like the most, the fact that there are many hairdressers and beauty salons, especially those with the most reputation, developing musical approaches, is a clear sign that this is where the real business is also to be found: not just in the cut, the dye or the treatment offered.

What type of music do I choose?

Now you know that music is an essential element for the profitability of any ordinary business, but… Now what?

What kind of music should you play in your establishment?

The first thing you should know is that the type of music you choose will depend a lot on the strategy previously defined.

Typically, the strategy of many venues is to define a type of music according to the time of day they are in.

For example, for times of the day when there are plenty of customers sitting in the waiting room and you can already breathe that little tension, it is best to counteract this tension with genres of music that are calmer and softer.

However, when there are not many people in the waiting room, you can opt for a more lively and cheerful type of music.

This is not always the case, however, as the choice of one type of music or another is also influenced by the activity taking place at the time.

To give you another example, when the activity that is being carried out at the moment consists, in the case of hairdressers, of applying a dye to a person’s hair, they usually opt for slower and calmer rhythms of music.

On the other hand, when you are cutting a client’s hair, you tend to opt for a more active type of music, as this way, you not only influence the client to have a more cheerful attitude, but also the worker’s attitude so that he or she has a faster work pace and, consequently, that translates into more possible clients per day.

Apart from the musical genre or the rhythm of the songs, there is also another aspect to take into account when dealing with music in hairdressers or beauty salons: the volume.

You must know how to find the perfect volume: not so loud that there are difficulties in communicating with the client, not so low that conversations with the client are heard perfectly and almost without wanting to be heard by third parties.

Conclusion

Platforms dedicated to the sale of legal music over the Internet are gaining more and more followers, as those responsible for any business begin to realize that they are an option with many more features and more profitable than the ‘forced’ payments to the P.R.O.’s.

Therefore, you are sure to find without any problem the platform that best suits your needs and that will satisfy you the most in terms of ease of use.