In this article:
- What's the difference between Stations and Playlists?
- What's the difference between Essential and Unlimited subscriptions?
- Regarding Offline Play
- Do I need more than one subscription for my venue location?
- Can I have both Essential and Unlimited Subscriptions?
- Can I use different devices to pair (1) subscription?
This article is to explain differences between Soundtrack Your Brand’s Subscription Service Types: Essential Subscription and Unlimited Subscription.
Any commercial music played from Soundtrack Your Brand on an event, regardless of subscription service types and using a station or playlist, is to be strictly used as BACKGROUND MUSIC FOR IN-PERSON ONLY EVENTS.
Commercial music cannot be used as: background music for hybrid/virtual event, on any live streams, music in any recordings, edited in any way, or cued up as stingers.
What's the difference between Stations and Playlists?
One of the key differences between the Essential Subscription and Unlimited Subscription is what appears as features in the create tab.
Let's first define what is a station and what is a playlist.
Station
Station is a feature for BOTH Essential AND Unlimited Subscriptions.
A Station is a continuous radio style music stream created by Soundtrack Your Brand’s algorithm. You can create stations either inspired by a Spotify playlist, or use tags like energy, genre, and sound to tailor it to your taste or clients’ music choices.
Any PUBLIC Spotify playlist with a minimum of 5 songs can be used to create a station, and Soundtrack Your Brand’s AI algorithm will complement it with 100 similar songs.
The Soundtrack Your Brand AI algorithm designs a custom-made station for you based on similar sounding songs and artists, whether using tags or importing a Spotify playlist to create a station. A station allows you to skip songs and adds songs that adapt to your music taste.
Song availability in Soundtrack Your Brand will depend on the licensing agreements at the current time, and song availability is continuously updated.
Soundtrack’s AI algorithm will do its best to import songs from the Spotify playlist into a Soundtrack Your Brand station. The AI algorithm may not import all the songs in the Spotify playlist and may not be in the exact order the songs on the Spotify playlist is in. The songs imported from a Spotify playlist into a Soundtrack station may be shuffled. Unavailable songs may be substituted with similar sounded songs or similar sounded artists.
Instructions on how to create a station may be found in these Knowledge Center Articles:
- Creating a station from tags
- Creating a station from a Spotify Playlist via the app
- Creating a station from a Spotify Playlist via the web
Playlist
Playlist is a feature for an Unlimited Subscription only.
An UNLIMITED Subscription is required for the playlist feature to appear in a Soundtrack Portal account.
A Playlist functions similarly to other streaming platforms. You can create a playlist by manually adding songs via a search in Soundtrack, import songs from a PUBLIC Spotify playlist with a minimum of 5 songs, or try Soundtrack Portal’s new feature generate a playlist with AI.
You can make your playlist by arranging songs in an exact specific order. However, there may be songs that are not available in the Soundtrack Portal that are available in Spotify. This is due to the music licensing business agreements between the Performance Rights Organizations and Soundtrack Your Brand.
While you can put songs of your choosing in a specific order, based on the song availability in Soundtrack, you CANNOT use Playlist on Soundtrack to do the following:
- Cannot use Playlist for cueing up for walk on/off music
- Cannot use Playlist for stingers
- Cannot use Playlist for live streams or virtual/hybrid calls
- Cannot use Playlist to make music edits for any purpose
- Cannot use Playlist for any recorded or media production material
Instructions on how to create a playlist may be found in these Knowledge Center Articles:
- Creating a Soundtrack playlist from via the Soundtrack App
- Creating a playlist from a Spotify Playlist via the Soundtrack App
- Creating a playlist from a Spotify playlist via the Soundtrack Portal
- Creating a Soundtrack Playlist from the Soundtrack Portal
What's the difference between Essential and Unlimited subscriptions?
Essential Subscription - $25 per month
An Essential Subscription is the cost-effective subscription service type option that is most used by Encore field team members for their location when providing the music solution: Encore Music Commercial Background Music through Soundtrack Your Brand.
The Essential Subscription gives users full legal license to play available music and gain access to Soundtrack Your Brand’s library, which consists of at least 100 million songs and 1,000+ Soundtrack-created playlists that are licensed for business. You can create custom stations, create a schedule to automate your music, and gives you the ability to filter out any songs with explicit lyrics.
Having access to the Internet throughout the event is required for this subscription type to play music. Additionally, access to a device, whether Encore Rental Laptop, Encore Apple iPod, or Encore Lenovo M8 Tablet is required to pair any subscription.
Unlimited subscription - $49.99 per month
The Unlimited Subscription includes everything in the Essential Subscription plus the ability to create song-by-song playlists, import Spotify playlists, or access to unlimited on-demand content online and offline.
The Unlimited Subscription gives the ability to make custom playlists through Soundtrack or modify any of Soundtrack’s 550+ already made playlists to customize, import a playlist from Spotify in the exact order in which it is displayed into Soundtrack.
Song availability in Soundtrack Your Brand will depend on the licensing agreements at the current time, and song availability is continuously updated. There may be songs that are available in Spotify but may not yet be available on Soundtrack Your Brand.
Regarding Offline Play
- For offline mode to work, ensure your playback device has at least 4GB of free storage.
- The music will be available offline for up to 30 consecutive days. After that, you will need to bring your player back online.
- You can’t browse music when playing offline, but you can play the music you have saved to Your music.
- Music selection is not supported on the Soundtrack Player hardware, as it needs to be online to talk to the Soundtrack service. Instead, it will shuffle the downloaded music.
- Soundtrack automatically replaces downloads when storage gets full so that the library reflects the music that you currently play.
- To download all of the tracks - keep the player online and playing music for at least the duration of the playlist.
Can I have both Essential and Unlimited Subscriptions?
Both subscription types CANNOT live in the same zones tab. (2) separate Soundtrack Portals for Essential Subscriptions only and Unlimited Subscriptions only are required.
Yes! A venue location can have both Essential and Unlimited Subscriptions.
However, separate Soundtrack Portals for each subscription type are required if a venue location needs both Essential and Unlimited Subscriptions.
Both subscription types cannot live in the same zones tab.
A venue location will need (1) separate portal for Essential Subscriptions with Essential Subscriptions only in the zones tab and (1) separate portal for Unlimited Subscriptions with Unlimited Subscriptions only in the zones tab.
A venue location will login with the same login credentials to their venue location’s Soundtrack Account when both Essential and Unlimited subscription types are activated because both subscription types will appear in the dropdown menu.
Please contact the Support Center immediately if your venue location activated both Essential and Unlimited subscription types but they are not displayed in your Soundtrack Account divided into (2) separate portals.
If a venue location is correctly activated with both Essential and Unlimited Subscription types, a venue location’s Soundtrack Account dropdown menu will have the Essential and Unlimited subscriptions divided into (2) separate portals. The UNLIMITED Subscription Portal will be labelled with UNLIMITED to distinguish the (2) different subscription portals.
Do I need more than one subscription for my venue location?
We highly recommend venue locations have more than (1) subscription, preferably one subscription for every Encore Music device your location has in physical inventory.
It is highly likely that there is an opportunity to provide music as background music for your client during their lunch breaks or in between sessions.
The cost of a monthly subscription to your location’s P&L is quite small compared to the considerable amounts of revenue you will earn from selling Encore Music at each of your events.
Thus, we extremely recommend having more than (1) subscription, especially if you have multiple Encore Music devices and have several different clients hosting meetings simultaneously at your location that require music.
You cannot pair (1) subscription to multiple devices at the same time.
For example, if you have 3 Lenovo M8 devices that need to be paired to a Soundtrack Essential or Unlimited subscription, for 3 separate events where Encore Music was sold that day, then you will need to have (1) subscription for each of the 3 Lenovo M8 devices. 3 subscriptions paired to 3 Lenovo M8 devices, NOT (1) subscription paired to 3 Lenovo M8 devices.
Can I use different devices to pair (1) subscription?
Yes, you can use different devices to pair (1) subscription, HOWEVER you will need to unpair the (1) subscription from the original device BEFORE you can pair the (1) subscription to a different device. This is why more than (1) subscription is recommended.
You cannot pair (1) subscription to multiple devices at the same time.
A subscription is paired to a device by using a unique one-time use only pairing code.
A pairing code cannot be used more than once on multiple devices.
A NEW pairing code to a subscription for one-time use only is generated AFTER that specific subscription is unpaired from the originally paired device.
Instructions on how to pair/unpair a device can be found in this Knowledge Center Article:
- Switching Encore Music Devices - Unpairing and Pairing
Stay Informed: Check out the Encore Music Connect Page for tons of valuable resources and info.
Need Help?: If you encounter any challenges or can't access your Soundtrack Your Brand web portal, we're here for you. Fill out this form to explain your issue and the Support Center team will respond to you quickly.
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We also recommend watching the Encore Music Amp Up August LLE recording, discussing the key elements for this solution here: Recording Here
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