Scala and the background music opportunity
As a Scala reseller you provide an Instore Marketing service to your clients. Many of Scala’s resellers provide more services to their clients or would like to do so. Upselling to an existing account is interesting and important: it generates extra income for you without extra costs for acquisition and it strengthens the relationship with your client.
Background music as a marketing service has many similarities to Digital Signage:
- Often the same people you deal with for Digital Signage are involved in the background music process.
- Music can play separately from visual content, but it can also be integrated with it.
- And last but not least; background music requires a service structure similar to Digital Signage products. Even better… Background music can make use of the same players as the ones you use for your Digital Signage projects!
The importance of
background music
In shops, restaurants, waiting rooms etc, music is of great importance. Music generally creates a pleasant atmosphere, but that’s not all...
Benefits of Instore Music
- Enhancing the shopping experience (showroom)
- Creating a pleasant shopping environment (supermarket)
- Stimulating brand awareness (fashion shop)
- Increasing the comfort of visitors (waiting room)
- Avoiding uncomfortable “silence situation” (bank)
Building an Instore Radio Channel
Sometimes a client just wants to play a simple collection of shopping music. Even then it is important to deliver quality: the music should be equalized in volume and dynamic, it should be free of explicit lyrics and it should definitely fit to the visitors’ mood, profile and expectations. Together with StreamAlot you can now provide your client an easy-to-use, high quality and hassle free music solution.
That is not all. Background music can also be a money maker… It can be used to differentiate a brand versus competitors. This significant brand marketing opportunity can be achieved via special music channels, which are enriched with “sound logos”, brand tunes, service messages and commercials. Many shops generate extra income by promoting specific products and services and selling advertising to their product partners.
Getting started
Contact a local or regional StreamAlot office or distributor today to discuss your project.
For multiple location projects (20+) you will be provided with the StreamAlot Retail Music Scan: a questionnaire that upon completion will be used by StreamAlot to compile a full music profile. This service is free of charge!
Western Europe & Latin America
Rob van Rozendaal
tel +31 20 4200052
rob@tmm.eu
Central Eastern Europe
Lorenz van der Stam
tel +48 22 3308700
lorenz@tmm.eu
Iberia
Gemma Cusco
tel +34 93 2051538
gemma@tmm.eu
Asia
Hans Pompen
tel +852 2541 1838
hans@themusicmarketeers.com
Who is StreamAlot?
StreamAlot is the background music platform of The Music Marketeers, leader in Instore Entertainment. With offices in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Barcelona, Warsaw and Hong Kong and a growing network of sales and support partners all around the world, we can assist Scala resellers in selling and servicing background music via Scala players or as a separate product. Both solutions offer you the chance, to enlarge your product portfolio and generate extra income.
The StreamAlot offer
Every chain is as strong as its weakest link and selling an Instore Radio solution is one thing, maintaining it however is equally important. StreamAlot will make sure your client will have a uninterrupted high quality music service to enforce their communication strategy.
Music
Each music channel, whether standard or tailored for your client, is updated on an ongoing basis, guaranteeing the best and latest music - always.
Commercial programming
Many clients use the commercial tool to enrich their Instore Radio channel. Although the StreamAlot platform allows you and your client to upload and program commercials themselves, our content team can program the commercials for you and even produce commercials in many languages at very competitive rates.
Hardware and service
Whether the music runs on Scala players or plays from the StreamAlot player, the people from StreamAlot are always at your service to assist and support you and your customer. With offices around the globe we are available for you and your clients day and night. The StreamAlot platform is an in-house development and the most stable solution in the market. Our own IT team guarantees solutions for every network related or other challenges. And in the unlikely case of a malfunctioning player, we offer a replacement guarantee time window of 24/48 hours.
Technical solutions
The StreamAlot platform is set up to deliver music to any location in any technical way needed or required!
Stand alone or integrated
STAND ALONE
The StreamAlot box/player is a plug & play “dedicated to music” device. And it can also be installed in VPN environments. It can play music stored on the box, or it can stream directly via the Internet. The StreamAlot box can play stand alone and it can be connected to a Scala player, integrating Digital Signage and background music.
INTEGRATED DIGITAL SIGNAGE SOLUTION
StreamAlot does not NEED a box for music playback purposes. StreamAlot can also stream music to the same player on which Scala is running. Moreover, it is possible to store music on a device that already runs Scala, if streaming is not desired.
Streaming or Forward & Store
STREAMING
When music is streamed via a player that runs Scala, the selected music will play via Internet, without storing any music locally. Changing or scheduling music channels or scheduling commercials, can all be done via the StreamAlot website. The player on which Scala runs will automatically pick up these changes and execute in a split second!
FORWARD & STORE (not implemented yet)
With this technique, the Scala content manager synchronizes its music content with the StreamAlot platform, automatically downloading the music files, generating the necessary playlists and scheduling them in the Scala channels. The devices will then synchronize with the content manager, as they normally do, and download the latest music files in order to play them locally.
How to
Streaming
To access the StreamAlot music channels, you will need to install an extra software package on each device that is running Scala. This package will install the necessary software and Scala plug-ins to give the StreamAlot software access to your Scala environment.
On the first run of this StreamAlot plugin, a wizard will appear, which will allow you to register the device on the StreamAlot platform. After providing your StreamAlot Partner credentials, the wizard will allow you to create a new client or register a new location for an existing client.
Finally, in the StreamAlot platform, you can select a music channel, schedule channels in a weekly agenda and schedule commercials in your client’s tailor made channels.
Forward & Store (not implemented yet)
You can also use StreamAlot music channels in your Scala network without having to stream the music, and therefore without using a constant amount of network bandwidth. The forward & store option allows you to synchronize the necessary music and scheduling information between the StreamAlot platform and the Scala players in your network, via Scala Content Manager.
In order to do this, no extra software needs to be installed on your Scala players. You just need to register the Scala players in the StreamAlot platform, log in with your StreamAlot Partner credentials, and create a customer or location for each device. In order to allow synchronization between StreamAlot and the Scala Content Manager, you also need to register the information of the CM (Content Manager). This means that the CM has to be accessible from the StreamAlot platform and the URL and login credentials have to be registered in the StreamAlot solution.
Finally, you can select a music channel, schedule a weekly music agenda and/or upload and schedule commercials in the StreamAlot platform for your client. Now all changes will be synchronized with the Scala Content Manager that you configured for your client. You can monitor this process on the StreamAlot website.
