Royal Streaming sells you a playlist. STIM and SAMI still bill the room, and the sound isn't yours.

Ask Royal Streaming whether you need STIM and SAMI and the answer depends on which catalogue you bought. Commercial: "Stim- och SAMI-avgifter tillkommer enligt deras tariffer."⁴ Its own licensing page: with commercial music "you need two separate agreements – one with Stim and one with SAMI – even when you use our music service".³ SAMI's FAQ has a question titled "I have Royal Streaming, do I need to sign an agreement?": the answer is yes, for commercial music.¹³ That is the same two-invoice model as Soundtrack, with a music designer in between.

Direct-licensed: "Inga extra avgifter till Stim eller SAMI."⁴ Fair enough, as far as it goes. But the day STIM inspects, it gives you 14 days to answer and then invoices by estimate,¹⁷ and Royal Streaming's site doesn't mention any proof of licensing you could show. Tonada gives every customer a licensing certificate: your brand's Tonada licence, every track produced for you, copyright scans for the full catalogue, and confirmation that none of it is registered with any collecting society. "Show it to any inspector."

Royal Streaming's direct-licensed catalogue is, in its own words, "high-quality, royalty-free music from Epidemic Sound".² Epidemic Sound is a Stockholm licensing company whose in-store catalogue is distributed through partners in every territory,⁶ and Royal Streaming's own sister product, FitnessPlayer, sells "40 000+ låtar från Epidemic Sound" to gyms.⁷ Nothing wrong with that library. But it isn't Royal Streaming's, it wasn't made for your venue, and the supplier down the road can license the same tracks. The commercial catalogue is the same trade with hits: every subscriber gets the whole of it, and none of them owns any of it.

This is where venues get confused. Royal Streaming sells "unique" playlists and music that changes through the day, and many customers take that to mean the music was made for them. It wasn't. A music designer selects tracks from a library and schedules them; the tracks existed before your venue signed up, and they play in other venues too. Curation is not composition.

"But my customers want the hits." Sometimes they do, and if a specific song is the point of your venue, budget for the commercial tier and the two society invoices. 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 creates the music from scratch. Its in-house producers compose every track ("never licensed from third-party libraries") and shape the sound around your brand's specific needs; on Premium you play from Tonada's adaptive library, adapted to your venue in real time; on Bespoke a dedicated producer composes a catalogue that belongs only to your brand. A sound nobody else can play, because nobody else has it.

Royal Streaming's higher tiers come with human music designers who build a profile, refresh it seasonally and schedule playlists to follow the day.¹¹¹⁵ It's a 2010s answer: good taste, applied in advance. 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. A rainy Tuesday and a full Saturday sound different without anyone updating anything, staff can rate tracks from the app while they play, and every location and zone runs from one dashboard.

Royalstreaming.com has no price list; the price "varies depending on solution, type of music and number of devices" ("Priset varierar beroende på lösning, typ av musik och antal enheter").¹ The figures are on its partners' pages: SEK 699 a month per device for direct-licensed music and SEK 799 for commercial, discounted to SEK 495–599 in partner offers, a music box at SEK 2,495 list (free in the offers), and an extra month free "with a 12-month agreement".⁴⁵ The notice period isn't published. On the commercial catalogue, add the PRO fees the venue pays itself: ≈ €30 a month estimated for a 100 m² shop from the 2026 STIM and SAMI tariffs,¹⁸ so ≈ €103 a month before the music box.

Tonada Premium is €19.99 per zone per month (about SEK 220) with Tonada's adaptive library, the adaptive engine, the apps, Sonos and the dashboard included, no PRO fees, and new music every week. The trial is 30 days, needs no card, and "Nothing is charged automatically". If you'd rather not use your own device, the Tonada Player Box is €15 a month and plugs into any amp or powered speaker. Even against Royal Streaming's discounted direct-licensed offer, Tonada costs less than half, and it is music composed for your brand.