The problem with the old system

Soluna Hotel Group runs boutique properties in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Copenhagen and Hamburg. Before switching to Track Studios, each property ran its own music setup independently — a mix of a legacy business music player, one location still using a commercial radio subscription, and two properties that had quietly defaulted to Spotify through an Apple TV.

"The music was fine," says Marc Dubois, Soluna's VP of Operations. "But it was eleven separate things to manage, and it was never quite right. Stockholm and Gothenburg have completely different atmospheres. We couldn't reflect that from central operations."

The license conversation

The switch was partly prompted by a letter from a collecting society. One of Soluna's properties had been running a consumer streaming service in the lobby. The letter arrived with an invoice for two years of unlicensed public performance — calculated based on the property's floor area and estimated operating hours.

"That focused minds quite quickly," Dubois says. "We knew we needed to fix it properly, not just upgrade the app."

Soluna's legal team reviewed several options. The requirement was clear: music that is demonstrably licensed for public commercial performance, with documentation they could produce if challenged again. "The certificate was the deciding factor. Not the music quality, not the price — the certificate."

The rollout

Soluna ran a one-property pilot at their Stockholm flagship for six weeks. The operations team set up daypart scheduling — lobby ambient in the morning, slightly warmer programming through lunch, more upbeat through afternoon check-in, quieter again through evening. They used the audio ad slot to run a nightly promotion for the hotel bar.

"It ran. Nobody had to touch it for six weeks. That was the test." The pilot expanded to all eleven properties over a three-month period.

The Hamburg property required specific attention — German collecting society GEMA inspections had been mentioned in industry conversations, and the team wanted the certificate verified before going live. Track Studios provided a German-language certificate version and a verification contact. "The legal team signed off in a day."

One tab, six lobbies

The operational change Dubois emphasizes most is consolidation. "Before, if I wanted to check what was playing in Copenhagen, I'd have to call the front desk or log into a separate system. Now I open one tab."

The multi-location dashboard shows all properties in a single view. Playing status, current playlist, schedule status, any active audio ads. Switching a playlist in Gothenburg because a private event overran — thirty seconds from phone call to change.

"We had a situation last autumn where a property manager called me from Malmö during a dinner event. The kitchen was running late and they wanted to shift the music mood for another twenty minutes before the scheduled transition. I changed it from the car. That's just not something you could do before."

What they would do differently

Dubois says the main thing he'd accelerate is the schedule template work. "We spent too long configuring each property individually when we could have built one master template and adapted from there. We figured that out by property four."

The audio ad feature took longer to integrate than expected — not technically, but operationally. Getting five property managers to write and record a thirty-second spot for their property required more coordination than anticipated. "The template is ready. We're just waiting on Hamburg to record theirs."

Overall the switch took less than a quarter to complete across eleven properties. Total ongoing cost is lower than the previous setup, and for the first time all properties are under one verifiable license. "If anyone asks what we're playing and why it's legal, we have a one-page answer. That's worth a lot."