Soundtrack sells you the stream. The collecting societies still bill the room.

Soundtrack is careful with its words, and the words are worth reading. Its help centre: your plan "includes the recording and publishing rights that you need to stream music", and "you will need to purchase the public performance licences that allow you to stream the music in a public environment."² STIM confirms it from the other side: a licence is needed "oavsett om musiken strömmas via en musikleverantör, tv eller radio".¹⁶ In Sweden the two invoices are the product: since 2025, Soundtrack is sold in SAMI's online shop as an add-on you buy while signing your SAMI agreement.¹⁷

Tonada's model is different at the root. Every track is written, produced and mixed in-house, and none of it is registered with any collecting society. Societies can only license repertoire they administer; STIM says so itself about royalty-free services. So you pay Tonada, you receive a licensing certificate listing every track and its clearance, and if an inspector asks, you hand it over. Play only Tonada, and there's nothing for STIM, SAMI, PRS, PPL or GEMA to bill.

A licensed catalogue is a commodity: every subscriber gets all of it and owns none of it. On Soundtrack's Essential plan you don't even fully control what plays: its "Smart Shuffle" keeps your playlists "licensed by occasionally mixing in similar tracks that match your chosen style",⁵ which is a polite way of saying the service inserts songs you didn't pick. Playing exactly what you chose, in your order, is an add-on.

"But my customers want the hits." Sometimes they do, and if a specific song is the point of your venue, budget for the two invoices and the Unlimited add-on. For most venues, music's job is atmosphere, tempo and dwell time, the reasons the classic Milliman study found slower, well-matched music lifted supermarket sales by 38 %. Tonada's producers compose every track in-house. On Premium you play from Tonada's adaptive library and the platform adapts each track's energy to your venue; on Bespoke a dedicated producer composes a catalogue that belongs only to your brand. Nobody else can play your sound, because nobody else has it.

Soundtrack's answer to a changing room is a weekly scheduler and an AI playlist generator that turns a text prompt like "chillout vibes for a hotel lobby" into a playlist.¹¹ Useful, and static: Tuesday at 3 pm plays what you set on Monday, whatever Tuesday turns out to be.

Tonada links live signals (weather feeds, foot-traffic sensors, occupancy data, time of day, season) and shifts energy, tempo and mood to match what's actually happening in the space. A rainy, empty Tuesday afternoon and a packed Saturday sound different without anyone touching the dashboard. Staff can thumbs-up or thumbs-down a track from the app while it plays, and the platform learns. One dashboard runs every location and zone, in the right time zone, automatically.

In Sweden, Soundtrack Essential costs SEK 559 per zone per month when you pay a year up front (SEK 6,708); monthly billing is about 10 % more.¹ Want to queue tracks, play them in your own order, or play offline? That's Unlimited, another SEK 220 per zone per month.¹ Messaging is an add-on. Hi-Fi audio is an add-on. Single sign-on is "custom pricing". Invoicing, guided setup and an account manager are "Contact sales". The trial is 14 days, and if you entered a card "your subscription will begin automatically when the 14 days are over."⁴ Yearly plans renew automatically, and "Subscription costs are non-refundable."³

That last line is the one customers write about. On Trustpilot, soundtrack.io scores 3.4 out of 5 across 283 reviews (12 Sep 2026); the recurring one-star themes are annual renewals charged without warning, no refunds, songs disappearing from imported Spotify playlists, and repetition.¹⁸

Tonada Premium is €19.99 per zone per month. That includes the catalogue, the adaptive engine, the apps, Sonos, the dashboard and new music every week. The trial is 30 days, needs no card, and "Nothing is charged automatically"; it simply expires if you don't continue. Every zone is the same price whether you have one location or two hundred.

Soundtrack runs on a lot of devices: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, a web player, Sonos, WiiM, Chrome OS and a hardware Soundtrack Player.¹³ Read the small print on the one most venues already own. On Sonos, Soundtrack plays in shuffle only, scheduling works only through Sonos alarms, messaging is "not compatible with Sonos", offline mode isn't available, audio is capped at 96 kbps even with the Hi-Fi add-on, and Soundtrack's own guide opens with "We're aware that some customers are experiencing quality issues with their Sonos playback."⁷⁸⁶¹⁴ The Soundtrack Player's price isn't published on the site; you order it through their store.¹⁵

Tonada plays on iPhone, iPad, Android, the web and Sonos, and if the venue has an amp or powered speakers and nothing to drive them, the Tonada Player Box is €15 a month, a small box that plugs into any amp, offline-ready, up and running in minutes.