Interview: Con Raso, Managing Director of Tuned Global
In a market flooded with generic, algorithm-generated playlists, Tuned Global is helping wellness apps deliver authentic and resonant experiences through high-quality licensed music. NxtNow Music recently spoke with Con Raso, Managing Director of Tuned Global, about the company’s mission to move the wellness and fitness industry beyond automated soundscapes and how its cloud music platform is powering meaningful partnerships with forward-thinking brands like Lululemon and MediMusic.
There is a huge difference between functional background noise and a curated soundtrack that motivates fitness, health and wellness. How is Tuned Global helping wellness apps move away from generic and automated soundscapes toward high-quality, licensed music that resonates with the listener?
There’s a real difference between audio that simply fills space and music that actually shapes motivation, emotion and behaviour. In fitness, health and wellness, music should never be an afterthought. The right track can lift intensity, support focus, regulate pace, or help someone calm down. Generic soundscapes rarely do that in a meaningful or memorable way.
What Tuned Global does is give wellness brands the infrastructure to use commercial music properly, rather than treating audio as an afterthought. That means access to licensed catalogues, rich metadata such as BPM, key, genre and mood, and the search, recommendation and curation tools needed to match music to a specific moment, user need or brand experience. Internally, Tuned Global positions this as helping partners move from broad streaming models into more personalised, commercially sustainable audio experiences, including in health and fitness contexts.
We’ve seen this in practice with partners like Lululemon and MediMusic. In one case, instructors can quickly find tracks that match the workout and the atmosphere they want to create. The other, music is being used in therapeutic settings where relevance, governance and trust are absolutely essential.
When done properly, music stops being a cost centre and starts becoming a driver of retention and long-term value.
How does Tuned Global’s infrastructure ensure that the wellness and fitness industry remains a sustainable revenue stream for the artists and producers who create the music used by brands?
Sustainability starts with doing music properly. If brands want to use music as part of their product experience, then artists, producers and rights holders need to be compensated fairly and transparently. That means licensing, rights management and reporting cannot be optional. They have to be built into the infrastructure from the start. If any of those pieces are missing, the model breaks down very quickly. At that point, it’s not a music strategy, it’s a liability.
That is exactly where Tuned Global plays a role. Our platform is designed to handle the complexity around music licensing and rights management so that fitness and wellness brands can use music legally, efficiently and at scale. We support clear reporting and compliant use of music, which helps ensure that the creators behind that music participate in the value being generated. For us, that is fundamental. A healthy fitness music ecosystem depends on making it easier for brands to use licensed music, while also protecting the long-term economics for the people who create it.
For a brand or fitness platform looking to move away from disconnected music solutions for its audience, what does a partnership with Tuned Global involve? How do you move a partner from a conceptual idea to an integrated, data-driven music experience using the Tuned Global cloud music platform?
The first step is usually strategic rather than technical. A partnership with Tuned Global is about taking music from a fragmented feature to an integrated product capability. We typically begin by understanding what role music should play in the brand experience. Is it there to motivate a workout, improve retention, support live and on-demand classes, deepen emotional engagement, or open up a new revenue opportunity? Once that is clear, we can help design the right solution around it.
From there, we provide the infrastructure and support needed to move from concept to launch. That can include catalogue access, rights intelligence, playlisting tools, APIs or white-label apps, plus licensing guidance and technical integration support. We also bring in data and metadata, search and recommendation, to make the experience more intelligent and more personalised over time.
That allows a partner to move from a concept to a production-ready service without having to build the entire music stack themselves. We remove friction rather than owning the end relationship. In other words, the partner owns the customer experience and brand, while Tuned Global handles the complex music plumbing underneath.
In practical terms, that can mean helping a fitness brand launch a playlisting workflow for instructors, embedding music streaming features into an existing app, integrating rights-cleared music into on-demand classes, or creating a more intelligent search and recommendation layer so users discover the right music faster. The data side matters too. Tuned Global’s platform is built to surface real-time analytics and listening insights, so partners can optimise what is working rather than guessing. That is what turns a disconnected music feature into a data-driven music product.
Music is sometimes treated as a 'nice-to-have' feature in a wellness app, but Tuned Global positions it as a core product layer. Is there any major shift you would like to see in the fitness and wellness industry regarding how brands value/invest in licensed music moving forward?
The biggest shift I’d like to see is not just in how brands value music, but in how they approach the perceived barriers around it.
Most fitness and wellness companies don’t ignore music because they think it’s a nice-to-have. They recognise its value. The challenge is that accessing commercial music is complex, involves licensing risk, and can feel expensive and difficult to navigate. So many choose the safer route, using production music or AI-generated soundtracks to avoid that risk altogether.
Too often, brands invest heavily in content, instructors, acquisition and UX, but underinvest in the music layer that shapes how all of that is actually felt by the user. Then they wonder why the experience feels generic or why retention stalls. If music is central to how a workout lands, how a meditation session feels, or how a wellness brand differentiates itself, then licensed music should be planned for at the same level as product, data and customer engagement.
Those alternative solutions can work at a basic level, but they rarely scale in terms of engagement. A track you recognise, that puts you in the right mindset instantly, has a very different impact on motivation and emotional connection.
If you look at companies like Peloton, their music strategy has been a major part of their growth. They didn’t just use music to support the product, they made it part of the experience and, in many ways, part of the brand itself.
I won’t pretend integrating commercial music is simple. It isn’t. But it is absolutely achievable with the right partners who understand licensing, rights management and product integration. Yes, it may require investment, but the upside is differentiation, stronger engagement, and better retention.
That’s really the shift we want to support. Helping brands move from avoiding the problem to solving it properly, and in doing so, unlocking the full value of music as part of their product.
For brands wanting to use Tuned Global's cloud music platform without needing data scientists or licensing experts, how do your APIs bridge that gap and accelerate their product launch time?
Tuned Global’s APIs are designed to make licensed music integration far more accessible. We handle the heavy lifting around infrastructure, rights management and delivery, while giving partners developer-friendly tools to integrate music into their apps and services quickly. That includes access to licensed catalogue functionality and features that support curation, discovery and playback experiences.
That said, licensing itself can take time. It’s an important process, and it needs to be done properly. What we do is help partners navigate that journey. We have established licensing frameworks and relationships with major rights holders, including companies like Universal Music Group and Believe, which can help fast-track the process and reduce friction.
We also encourage brands to start small and scale. You don’t need 100 million tracks on day one. What matters is having the right catalogue for your audience and use case, then expanding as you gain traction and learn what resonates.
The result is that brands can accelerate their launch timelines without needing in-house data scientists or licensing specialists. They can focus on building the experience for their audience, while we provide the infrastructure that makes it achievable, scalable and commercially viable.
Quotes:
“Music in wellness shouldn’t behave like wallpaper. It should behave like a product.
The gap between generic audio and meaningful music is where engagement, retention and brand value are won.
Our role is to remove the legal, technical and operational friction that has historically stopped brands from using licensed music properly.
If music affects motivation, pace, emotional state and loyalty, then it is not a nice-to-have. It is part of the core user experience.
Brands should not need a room full of data scientists and licensing specialists to launch a great music product. That’s exactly why our APIs exist.”