Questions Worth Asking

Who we are

1. Okay — who are you? I’ve never heard of you.

Fair. In a sense that’s the job — we’re the brand behind the brand.

We’re an audio agency. We build radio stations for businesses: real stations, hand-programmed every morning by people whose names are published on this website.

Twenty years ago our founders built one of the first consumer internet radio services in the world, and were in the room when this country worked out what internet radio owed the people who actually make the records. In 2005 they pointed all of that at business, and YBR became the first American company to deliver a commercial music service over the internet.

Most of us have been here the whole time since. The same small team, two decades, still arguing about songs. That part we have no intention of changing.

You’ve almost certainly heard our work without knowing whose it was. Subway®. Dunkin’®. Taco Bell®. Baskin-Robbins®. Wendy’s®. Burger King®. Popeyes™. Dairy Queen®. Papa Murphy’s™. Aroma Joe’s®. And just as many you haven’t heard of — Fuzzy’s Tacos, Amplify Hair Salon, Rittenhouse Market, Northman’s, Home Zone Furniture, The Dog Stop®. WellSpan™ and Franciscan™ hospitals. Porsche, Kia, Audi and Subaru dealerships. Several airports and dozens of country clubs.

One-room barbershops and thousand-location brands. Same team answers both phones.

 

2. So what do you actually do?

We make a business sound like itself. There are three ways in, and they answer two different needs.

The one that fixes today. Eight professionally curated lineups, built for particular kinds of business — restaurants, retail, healthcare, hospitality, spas and salons, memory care, faith spaces, and an all-purpose one called ioStandard™. Nothing to build, nothing to manage, licensing included. Pick the one that fits and you’re playing this afternoon. Literally this afternoon — see question 41.

The one built only for you, music-only. No host, no messaging. Just your sound, programmed daily by someone who took the time to learn your brand. We’ve made dozens of these. It’s a quiet specialty of ours.

And then the one you actually want. Your own station. Your name on it, said out loud. Your music. Your promotions, your hiring, your story — written and produced properly and woven between the songs. A host who ties the whole thing together. That isn’t background music. It’s in-store radio, and it’s yours.

All three are programmed by hand, every day, by a person. All three include your licensing. None of them ask anything of you after you press play.

Most people arrive needing the first and leave wanting the third. That’s a completely normal way to do this.

3. Is this for a business like mine?

Here’s who we’re actually for.

You chose the paint. You have opinions about the lighting — real ones, about temperature and fixtures and which combination made the room feel wrong for a month. You picked the fabric on the seating and you can say why. At some point you’ve had a quiet word with someone about how they greet people at the door.

If that’s you, music is already on your list. It’s just probably the last thing on it — the one part of the room you never got around to doing properly, because doing it properly is somebody’s whole job.

It’s our whole job.

It doesn’t matter what you sell. Restaurants, dental practices, tire shops, barbershops, dispensaries, furniture showrooms, banks, gyms, daycares, bowling alleys, memory care. One location or a thousand. If people walk in, and you care how it feels when they do, you’re who we built this for.

Us and the names you already know

4. Talk me out of Mood Media.

We won’t knock them — or Muzak, or SiriusXM. They’re real companies doing real work at enormous scale.

Scale is the point, though. Mood serves around half a million locations. At that size, your store is a row in a database, and the service is built accordingly: a dashboard, a library, an algorithm, a support queue.

We’re built the other direction. A person programs your station. A person writes your messaging. A person answers when you call, within the hour, guaranteed in writing, seven days a week. You get an account manager with a name.

One of us is engineered for half a million locations. One of us is engineered for yours.

5. Nobody ever got fired for hiring the big guy. Why risk you?

Because “defensible” and “right” aren’t the same word.

Run the actual risks instead of the reputational one. Who picks up on Saturday at 11am? What’s the contract length? What happens at renewal? Who owns the hardware? How many hands has the company changed?

We publish a one-hour human response guarantee, a 99.99% uptime guarantee, no lock-in, and twenty years of unbroken ownership. Ask the big name for those four in writing and see what comes back.

6. What can they do that you can’t?

Real answer, since you asked:

Geography. We’re licensed for the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. Global chains need a global vendor.

On-site installation. We don’t send technicians and we don’t sell speakers or amplifiers. If your project needs AV design and a crew, that’s a different kind of company.

The full stack. Some of them bundle digital signage, drive-thru systems, on-hold audio and scent. We do audio. That’s the whole menu.

Round-the-clock support. We answer 6am to 9pm Pacific, every day of the year, and we guarantee a human inside an hour. If you truly need 2am, we’re not your vendor.

Procurement theater. They have enterprise sales machinery — RFP teams, MSAs, the works. We have a phone number.

If any of those five are dealbreakers, we’d rather you know now than in month four.

7. Then what can you do that they can’t?

Build a station a person hand-programs from scratch every single day. Five hundred fresh tracks, every day, per station.

Nobody else does this. Not because they haven’t thought of it — because their economics don’t allow it. Algorithmic rotation is cheaper. Weekly refreshes are cheaper. A fixed selection that never changes is cheapest of all. Once you’re serving half a million locations, daily human curation stops being a product decision and becomes an impossibility.

Small is what makes it possible. Small is the feature.

8. You built all your own technology. So why is a person still doing everything?

Because knowing what to automate is the job.

We’ve written a lot of software over twenty years — the delivery network, the device firmware, the scheduling engine, the fleet portal, the app. All of it exists to take away work that shouldn’t need a human: pushing updates, watching devices, holding data on a quarter of a million songs, getting a stream into a room in Tacoma without it hiccuping.

None of it decides what plays. None of it writes your copy. None of it answers your phone.

That isn’t nostalgia and it isn’t a limitation we’re dressing up as a virtue. Those three things are judgment calls about your business, and judgment is the one thing nobody has yet automated without the result sounding automated. Anyone in this industry can tell you what their technology does. Ask them what they’ve deliberately kept it away from.

9. You keep saying “agency.” What does that actually mean?

A music service sells you access. An agency takes the work off your desk.

The difference shows up in the verbs. A service gives you a library, a dashboard and a login — then you build, screen, schedule and maintain. An agency asks what your business is trying to be, then goes and makes that, keeps making it, and calls you when something needs deciding.

You have a login with us too. You’ll almost never use it. That’s the point.

10. What happens when I call you?

A person answers. Usually in a few rings.

Not a phone tree. Not a ticket number. Not a chatbot that offers to escalate. Someone who can see your account, knows your station, and can fix the thing while you’re still on the line — including reaching into your device remotely.

Our written guarantee is a human response within one hour, 6am to 9pm Pacific, seven days a week, 365 days a year. In practice it’s usually minutes. If you ever call inside those hours and nobody picks up, something has gone badly wrong on our end and we want to hear about it.

888-688-5962.

11. Why not just put Spotify on and keep the money?

Two reasons, and the second one is the real one.

The licensing: consumer streaming services prohibit commercial use in their own terms. A personal account is not licensed to play in a business, and business licensing is a separate thing entirely. Ours is included.

The one that actually costs you: Spotify hands you a library and walks away. Somebody at your company then owns building the selections, screening the lyrics, keeping it fresh, and restarting it when a staff member closes the browser at 2pm on a Friday. That’s an unpaid job you’ve quietly created, and it’s the first job that gets dropped when the store gets busy.

Spotify gives you music. We give you a station, and nobody at your company has to think about it again.

The music

12. Who decides what my customers hear?

A person. The same person, most days.

They start with an empty program and build your day out of nothing — five hundred-odd tracks, sequenced hour by hour, because 8am in your room is not 8pm in your room and pretending otherwise is how a space ends up feeling like an airport.

They think about tempo the way a cook thinks about salt. What a track does to the pace somebody walks. Which song can follow which without the seam showing. How to lift a room at four in the afternoon when everyone in it is tired. When to leave space.

Then tomorrow they do it again, from nothing.

13. A person, or an algorithm? And how would I ever know?

You’d know by month three. That’s when a machine always shows itself — never in one bad song, but in the seams. A track landing somewhere it has no business landing. The room going flat at the same hour every day and nobody able to say why.

Here’s the honest architecture. We use software for what software is genuinely good at: holding data across a library of 250,000-plus songs so nobody is working from memory. Every decision after that belongs to a person. What goes in, what order, what follows what, what gets cut on the way. Every track that airs has been heard by someone before it ever reached you.

Don’t take that on faith. Take the Preview — seven days, free, in your own room. Curation is a claim on a website and an obvious fact in a space.

14. How often does it change?

Every day. Five hundred-plus tracks per station, chosen for that day and no other.

Which sounds like overkill until you’ve stood in a room where it isn’t happening. A space running on a fixed selection develops a rhythm people learn without meaning to — the regular who knows what comes after the Fleetwood Mac, the barista who can feel Thursday arriving. Nobody complains about it. They just stop hearing the room, and a room nobody hears stops doing any work for you.

Rebuilt daily, that never sets. Not a weekly refresh, not a monthly drop, not a library on shuffle. A new program every morning, the way real radio has always worked.

15. Will my staff hate it by March?

That’s the right question, and almost nobody asks it.

Your customers hear your music for twenty minutes. Your staff hear it for eight hours, five days a week. They will notice a loop long before any customer does, and a tired soundtrack quietly becomes a morale problem you never trace back to the speakers.

Daily programming across deep libraries is the only real fix. Your Tuesday doesn’t sound like your Monday. That’s not a nice-to-have — it’s the entire reason we program the way we do.

16. Is it clean? Who’s actually checking?

A person is checking. Every track is reviewed by a human ear for lyric content before it ever enters the library. Not a metadata flag, not an algorithmic filter. Explicit content is excluded.

Some stations carry an (m). That means the programming may touch mature themes — drinking, heartbreak, a rowdy Saturday night, the material country, rock and R&B have always been made of — or may include radio edits of songs that were once explicit. Nothing explicit airs either way. The flag exists because a sports bar and a pediatric waiting room have different standards, and only you know which one you’re running.

Want strictly family-first? Choose the stations without the (m).

We’re not just focused on what plays. We’re focused on what doesn’t. That’s the quieter half of the job and it’s the half you’d notice immediately if we got it wrong.

And if something ever airs that doesn’t belong in your business, call us. It’s out of rotation the same day, and the accountability is ours.

17. Do you have my kind of music?

Almost certainly, and more of it than you’d expect. Six deep families built over two decades: 20+ pop and rock stations, country and Americana, 15+ R&B and hip-hop, 20+ jazz and classical, 10+ ambient and chill, and 20+ eclectic and specialty — one of the deepest specialty benches anywhere.

But genre is the least useful thing you could tell us.

Tell us the feeling. What the room should do to somebody walking in at nine in the morning, and whether that’s the same thing it should do at six at night. Whether you want people to settle in or keep moving. Who your regulars are. What the single worst possible song in your space would be — that one is usually the most revealing thing you’ll say.

“Sunday morning, but for a hardware store” is a better brief than “adult contemporary,” and we’ll get much closer to it.

And if you can’t put words to it at all, say that too. Life’s most interesting things are hard to describe — that’s usually the sign there’s something worth building rather than something to pick off a list. The gap between good enough and just right is the whole job.

18. Can it change through the day? Room to room?

Both. And this is the part of the work we’d most like to talk to you about.

Through the day. A room is not one room. The place at seven in the morning — first light, someone wiping down a counter, two people who wanted quiet — is not the place at one, and neither is the place at closing when the staff want to go home and the music can help them get there. We call it dayparting. In practice it’s a conversation about your hours: where the lulls fall, when the rush lands, what four in the afternoon feels like when everyone’s flagging and the room needs a hand. Then we program to that.

Room to room. A lobby and a treatment room want different things. So do a pool deck and a fitness room, a showroom and a service waiting area, a dining room and the bar it opens onto. Multi-zone plans run different stations in different spaces at the same time. Tell us the floor plan and we’ll tell you what we’d do with it.

You already make these calls about lighting. Nobody puts the same bulb in the treatment room as the reception desk. Sound works the same way and gets a fraction of the thought.

19. Once we’re live, can I still change my mind?

Yes. And the first month is when we want to hear from you most, because that’s when a station is still finding the room.

Nothing sounds exactly right on day one. It can’t — we’ve heard your brief, we haven’t stood in your space at four on a Saturday. What usually needs moving is small and specific: it’s a touch bright in the mornings, the dinner hour wants to slow down sooner, there’s a run of songs around three that doesn’t fit the room. Tell us and we’ll move it.

For a custom station there’s no cap on revisions, and no clock on them either. For any station, feedback on genre, era or overall feel goes to programming@yourbrandsradio.com, where the music directors actually read it.

The best source of that feedback is almost never the owner. It’s your staff. They’re in the room for eight hours and they know before anyone else does — usually weeks before.

20. And if something plays that’s wrong for my room?

Call 888-688-5962. It’s out of rotation the same day.

No ticket, no form, and nobody asks you to justify it. You don’t have to explain why a song doesn’t belong in your room — you’re the one standing in it.

That’s the whole standard, and it matters more than it sounds. If the fix were slow or awkward, you’d start monitoring. You’d have half an ear on the speakers during a shift you should be spending on your business. That’s the job we’re supposed to be doing, and the moment we hand any of it back to you we’ve stopped being worth what you’re paying.

The part nobody else does

21. Standard or custom — what am I actually choosing between?

There are three doors, not two.

Standard Music Service — professionally curated music for your industry. Eight lineups: Foodservice, Retail, Healthcare, Hospitality, Spa, Memories, Praise, and the all-purpose ioStandard™. Music-only, hand-programmed daily, licensing included, priced publicly, playing today. For most businesses this is the right answer and we’ll say so.

A custom station, music-only — built for you rather than for your industry, with no host and no messaging. Just your sound, programmed daily by someone who learned your brand. We’ve built dozens of these over the years and it’s genuinely a specialty. If you want a station that’s yours but you don’t want a voice in the room, this is the one nobody asks us about and plenty of people want.

YourBrandsRadio™ Custom In-Store Radio — the full thing. Your name on the station. Your music. Your messaging between the songs. And a host, a real radio voice who introduces the music and tells your story.

The last two are quoted, because they’re built rather than chosen. Plenty of businesses start on Standard and move up when they’re ready — that’s a normal path, not a failed one.

22. What’s a host, and why would I want one?

A host is the difference between music playing in your building and a station that belongs to you.

A real voice. Someone who comes on between songs to welcome your guests, say what that last track was, mention the patio’s open again, and hand off to the next song like they’ve been doing it for twenty years — because they have. It’s the oldest move in broadcasting and it has never stopped working. A room with a voice in it feels tended. A room without one feels like it’s on hold.

You’ve heard this your whole life without once asking why radio feels alive and an elevator doesn’t. That’s the host. That’s the entire answer.

Hosts are part of Custom In-Store Radio only. Standard Music Service is music-only, and so are the +4 The Holidays™ and +25 More Music™ stations that come free with your plan.

It’s the clearest reason a business moves up from Standard to Custom. It’s also the one thing in this industry no algorithm has managed to fake — and you can hear the ones that try.

23. Real person, or AI?

Real person, with a real name, who you can email.

Our hosts are working radio professionals — Ally Catherine, Darcy Douglas, Jamal Harris, Winston Stripling, Woody Jameson and eleven more. Many of them are also the music directors programming the stations they host, which is why the voice and the music sound like they belong to each other.

Synthetic voice is cheap and getting cheaper. It also sounds exactly like what it is, and your customers can tell. We’re not going to do that to your brand.

24. Could the host be one of my own people?

Yes — and we often recommend it.

A real voice from inside the business is the most authentic version of this there is. A founder, a long-tenured manager, someone your regulars would actually recognize. We’ll coach them, produce them, and make them sound like they’ve been on the radio for years.

Or pick one of ours. Tell us which voice you’re drawn to and we’ll talk about availability and fit.

25. What’s in-store messaging — and what would I even say?

Fifteen seconds, dropped into the natural break where a commercial goes on real radio. Your voice, in your own room, reaching somebody who is already standing in your business and already deciding something.

What to say is the easy part, and it’s almost never a hard sell. What just came back on the menu. That you’re hiring, and it’s a good place to work. The loyalty program nobody joins because nobody mentions it. Why the place is called what it’s called. The question your staff get asked twelve times a day and shouldn’t have to keep answering.

Then think about the reach for a second. Not an impression bought against a stranger who might scroll past — every single person who walks through your door, for the whole length of their visit, in a room you control, while they’re deciding. Around 80% of shoppers say in-store messaging influences what they buy while they’re in the building. There is no cheaper attention anywhere in your business, and almost nobody uses it.

26. Who writes it? Please don’t say me.

We do. That’s the agency part.

Our in-house creative team develops the copy with you, produces it, schedules it and handles placement. You approve everything before it airs. If you have a marketing team, we’ll work to their brief. If you don’t, we’ll write it from a conversation.

Nothing goes on air that you haven’t signed off.

27. Will it sound like a cheap local radio ad?

Not unless you ask us to. Please don’t.

You know the sound. The shouting. The manufactured deadline. A voice doing an impression of enthusiasm. That sound isn’t a style choice — it’s what happens when copy gets written in fifteen minutes for a client nobody has met, thrown in free as a sweetener on a media buy. It sounds cheap because it was.

We’re not selling you airtime. Your station has no advertisers to satisfy, no unsold inventory, no rate card deciding how loud anything needs to be. Which frees the messaging to do what good messaging actually does: sound like your business on a good day, from someone who sounds like they work there.

Quieter than you’re expecting. Slower, too. Written to be overheard rather than announced. That’s a different craft altogether, and it’s the one we’ve spent twenty years on.

28. Does the messaging cost extra?

No. Writing, production, scheduling and placement are included in your custom station quote. Not a line item, not an agency retainer, not billed by the spot.

29. Can each location say something different?

Yes, and it’s a genuine specialty.

We built the geo-targeted messaging system in 2022 with one of the largest fast food companies in America to solve exactly this: one message in Arizona, another in New England and Canada, targeted by region, managed centrally, with zero burden on any store manager. Since 2024 it’s available to every custom station client.

Different music by location works too. So does different messaging by daypart.

Prove it

30. Can I hear it before I pay you anything?

Yes, and we’d much rather you did.

Start with a free consultation — a short conversation, not a sales gauntlet, because knowing what kind of business you run changes which station we’d put in front of you. Then a free 7-Day Preview of the right one, in your actual space, through MyMusic in any browser. No charge, no card, no obligation.

Seven days is deliberate. Anyone can love a station for an afternoon. We want you to hear a Tuesday.

31. Something built for my brand, or a demo reel from another client?

Built for you. We call it a Preview — your music profile, your energy, your messaging, so you hear what your station would actually be.

You’ll know inside sixty seconds whether we understood you. If we didn’t, tell us what’s off and we’ll rebuild it. There’s no limit on that and no charge for it.

We’d genuinely rather hear “this isn’t right” than have you sign up for something that’s merely fine.

32. Who else like me uses you? Can I call one of them?

Yes. Ask and we’ll connect you with a business that looks like yours.

Fuzzy’s Tacos, Amplify Hair Salon, Rittenhouse Market. Dozens of dental and medical practices. WellSpan™ and Franciscan™. Home Zone Furniture, Northman’s, The Dog Stop®. Several airports and dozens of country clubs. Porsche, Kia, Audi and Subaru dealerships. Franchise groups across Burger King®, Dunkin’®, Subway®, Wendy’s® and McDonald’s®. Aroma Joe’s®, Baker’s™ and Papa Murphy’s™ at corporate. The Barbers™ runs seven of their own branded stations with us.

A reference call is a five-minute phone call. Take it.

33. And if I hear it and it’s wrong?

Then you walk away, and we shake hands.

The Preview costs nothing and commits you to nothing — that’s the entire reason it exists. And if you’re already live and something’s off, we don’t hide behind a contract. Tell us what’s wrong and we’ll fix it, or you cancel at the end of your billing cycle with no penalty.

We have never wanted a customer who’s staying because leaving is difficult.

What it costs

34. What does it cost?

Standard Music Service: as low as $20 per location per month on an annual plan, or $25 per location per month billed quarterly. About sixty-six cents a day. Licensing included. No setup fee. The price is on the site — pick your industry and it’s right there.

YourBrandsRadio™ Custom: quoted for your brand, because it’s built for your brand. Daily curation, your host, your messaging, all licensing and a dedicated account manager are in the number.

If your brand already runs with us, your negotiated rate is behind your access code — request one on your brand’s page and we verify within the hour.

35. There’s a service at thirteen dollars. Why are you more?

Because you’d be comparing two different things that happen to both involve music.

The commodity services run $12 to $14 a month, and at that price you are the labour. You build the selection, you screen it, you refresh it, you restart it. There’s no host, no messaging, no daily programming, and no promise about who answers the phone or when.

Nobody is selling human curation at $13. The arithmetic doesn’t exist. What’s being sold at $13 is access to a library, which is a perfectly honest product — just not the one we make.

36. The enterprise guys charge more than you. What’s the catch?

Fair suspicion. Here’s the actual arithmetic.

We own our CDN outright instead of renting it — that alone took spin-up from $2,000 a location to zero. We built our own scheduling software instead of licensing the industry tool at $1,500 a seat. We carry no private equity debt, fund no enterprise sales force, and pay no investor return.

And the catch, plainly: no on-site installation, no 24-hour support line, no signage or scent or drive-thru bundle, US and Canada and Puerto Rico only. We’re deep rather than wide. If you need wide, question 6 was honest with you.

37. What do I have to buy up front?

Possibly nothing.

The YourBrandsRadio™ App is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and Windows. MyMusic runs in any browser with nothing to download. Either one plays your station the moment you subscribe.

If you’d rather have dedicated hardware, the Grace Digital® Link™ is $150, once, per location. It carries a 1-year factory warranty, and an optional extended warranty adds a second year for $25 per device — available only at the time of purchase, not after.

On how long it lasts: we officially expect five years, because streaming codecs and wireless standards move and we’d rather quote you something defensible. Unofficially, we have Links in the field past fifteen. They’re the Sony Trinitron in your parents’ basement. They just keep going.

38. What’s not on the price list?

Nothing. No setup fee, no spin-up fee, no installation fee, no cancellation fee, no per-message charge. No charge for your account manager, your creative work, or your licensing.

The only numbers are the subscription, and the device if you want one.

39. Am I signing a contract?

Not a long one, and not a trap.

Billing runs annual or quarterly, and you can cancel at the end of your current cycle with no early termination penalty. At ten or more locations, direct monthly billing is available.

Cancel and the hardware stays yours — nothing to ship back, nothing to return. Every new Grace Digital® Link™ also carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Subscriptions themselves aren’t returnable, but if something’s gone wrong, talk to us. We look at those case by case and we’re fair about it. Full terms, in plain language: Subscription Policy.

Getting it playing

40. What do I have to plug in?

Three ways to play it. Same service, same audio, your choice.

The free app — download, pair, press play. A tablet by the register works fine. iOS · macOS · Android · Windows

MyMusic — any browser, any device, nothing to install. Also how you drop in on any location from anywhere and hear exactly what your guests are hearing right now.

The Grace Digital® Link™ — $150 once, a purpose-built receiver about the size of a paperback. It arrives preconfigured, never sleeps, never takes a phone call mid-shift, and can’t be accidentally closed by a staff member. It’s what busy locations choose.

You’ll need speakers or a sound system. We don’t sell those and take no commission on anyone who does — but tell us your space and your budget and we’ll point you at gear that’s worked well for businesses like yours.

41. How fast can this be playing in my room?

Immediately, if you want it to be. The whole path is four steps:

1. Create an account
2. Choose your plan
3. Choose how you want it delivered — free app, browser, or the Link
4. Subscribe

The moment that completes, your station is live in MyMusic and the app. Nothing ships, nothing installs, nothing gets scheduled. People do this on a Tuesday afternoon and have music on the floor before close.

Ordering a Link? It ships the same day if your order is in before 2pm Eastern, on 2-3 day delivery, and arrives preconfigured. Need it faster, say so on the order.

If you want to know exactly what “plug and play” means before you spend anything, read the setup guide first — it’s public, it’s short, and it’s the whole of what’s involved: Grace Digital® Link™ Quick Start Guide.

A custom station runs on a different clock, and here’s the honest shape of it. We’ll have something for you to hear inside a week. Getting it properly dialed usually takes a few weeks beyond that — and most of that depends on you: how fast you can listen, react, and tell us what’s still not right. Brands that turn feedback around in a day are live fast. Brands that go quiet for two weeks take two weeks longer. We’d rather say that than quote you a number we don’t control.

42. Will my IT guy fight me on this?

He’ll have a good day, actually.

The device streams audio and nothing else. It never touches your point-of-sale. It carries no customer or payment data, holds no credentials for anyone to manage or rotate, and can sit on a completely isolated network. Standard HTTPS, no VPN, no static IP, no custom firewall rules, no software installed anywhere. We push every firmware update remotely.

Bandwidth is 128k HE-AAC — a small, steady trickle, less than loading most web pages, and nowhere near enough to bother your cameras or your registers.

High-security environment — healthcare, banking? Everything your IT team needs is already written down: YBR + Grace Digital® Link™ External Network Requirements. Hand them that document and they’ll have it running in minutes. Questions go to helpdesk@yourbrandsradio.com. We speak fluent IT.

43. Is the licensing really covered — and will it survive an audit?

Yes, and yes.

Your subscription covers ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and GMR in the United States and SOCAN in Canada, where we’ve held Tariff 16 since 2008. We handle every administrative filing and royalty report, which is why we ask for your service address at signup — each location is reported and covered individually.

That’s also why it’s one subscription per location. It isn’t a pricing tactic; it’s what makes the coverage real.

Certain limitations do apply, and they’re set by copyright law and the collectives rather than by us. The law carves out a few narrow exemptions based on your square footage, how many speakers or screens you run, and how many rooms and outdoor spaces the sound reaches — narrow enough that most businesses don’t qualify for them anyway.

A handful of situations also need licensing that a business music license doesn’t cover at all: charging admission, live music, a jukebox, or a yoga studio. Those are different licenses entirely, and we’ll tell you so rather than let you assume you’re covered.

We’ve written the whole thing up plainly — what a public performance is, who the PROs are, how enforcement actually works, and where the exceptions sit: Business Music Licensing Essentials. Worth five minutes if any of that sounds like your situation.

Going through a franchise audit, a vendor review or corporate procurement and need documentation? Ask. We produce it regularly. bizdev@yourbrandsradio.com

After you’re live

44. It’s 11am Saturday and the music’s dead. Who picks up?

We probably already know.

Every device is monitored in real time through our fleet portal. When one drops offline we usually see it before your manager does and we’re working on it before anyone calls.

If your manager notices first, their entire job is one step: call 888-688-5962 or open chat. They don’t troubleshoot, don’t log in, don’t touch the device. They say which location, and the problem becomes ours. They go back to running the shift.

A real person engages within the hour. That’s a written guarantee, seven days a week, 365 days a year, 6am to 9pm Pacific. Outside those hours, someone contacts you personally first thing next morning.

One honest limitation: if the internet goes down at your location, the music stops. The app, the browser and the Link all need a connection, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Outages are usually short and everything reconnects on its own. If you have a site with genuinely unreliable internet, tell us before you subscribe — that’s a real conversation and we’d rather have it early.

45. Who’s my person? A name, not a portal.

A name.

Custom In-Store Radio clients get a dedicated account manager. Every subscriber gets Priority Support included free — phone, email or chat, whichever suits you, 6am to 9pm Pacific, every day of the year.

Beyond that, you can reach past the front desk. Song request or feedback for a station’s host? Email the host directly, or hosts@yourbrandsradio.com. Want more 80s, less tempo, a different feel? programming@yourbrandsradio.com — the music directors read it. Billing is admin@, technical is helpdesk@, sales is bizdev@, anything else is hello@.

Your staff can email our staff. No manager sign-off required. That’s not a feature we built — it’s just what happens when a company is small enough to still work like a company.

46. How painful is it to switch from what I’ve got?

Less than you’re bracing for.

We build your Preview before you commit, so day one already sounds right rather than sounding like a change. Tell us what you play now and what you actually like about it — that goes straight into the brief. Multi-location operators usually pilot a handful of sites and roll out from there.

There’s no installation to schedule and no crew to book. Your old hardware comes out, ours goes in or the app opens, and the room sounds better that afternoon.

Then the first few weeks come with a live feedback loop: anything that feels off gets tuned by a real person, fast. That’s the part people tell us they weren’t expecting.

Hear it in your own room

Everything above is a claim. The Preview is the evidence.

A free consultation — a few minutes, and we’ll know which station belongs in your space. A free 7-Day Preview — that station, in your business, at no charge and no obligation.

• Consultation: yourbrandsradio.com/pages/request-free-music-consultation
• Preview: yourbrandsradio.com/pages/request-free-preview
• 888-688-5962 — 6am to 9pm Pacific, seven days a week, 365 days a year
• LiveChat on every page

A real person will respond within the hour. In writing, guaranteed, and usually in minutes.