Powering Fitness and Wellness With Music: What’s New?
Music and movement are neurologically intertwined. Tempo influences pace, rhythm supports endurance, and familiar tracks can reduce perceived exertion. Beyond physiology, music creates shared moments. It sets the atmosphere, builds anticipation and turns individual activity into collective experience.
For sports, wellness and fitness brands, this means music selection needs to align with brand values, customer experiences and emotional outcomes.
Well-chosen music increases workout intensity and duration, improves customer retention, strengthens brand recognition, creates community and cultural relevance, and opens new partnership models. When delivered through properly licensed, data-informed systems, these outcomes become measurable and scalable.
Music also gives brands a way to stay culturally connected to their audience. The question for operators is how to use music strategically and legally. This is especially important because the way brands approach music has changed significantly.
Early adoption in wellness, fitness and leisure centres often meant plugging in a Spotify playlist and hoping for the best. Today’s leading sports and fitness innovators are far more sophisticated, curating music experiences that are brand-led, data-informed, tailored to specific audiences and workouts and fully licensed for commercial use.
This shift is being powered by specialist music technology platforms like Tuned Global, which works behind the scenes with brands to manage licensing, catalogue access, analytics and distribution at scale.
Rather than forcing sports brands to become music experts, these platforms allow them to offer legally compliant music in commercial environments, control curation across locations or content formats, and adapt music to different activities and intensities.
Through advanced APIs and centralised cloud infrastructure, operators can manage licensing, catalogue access and music governance at scale, while maintaining full creative control.
They also provide the reporting required by rights holders and integrate music into apps, devices, wearables and connected platforms. The result is music that feels intentional, on-brand and deeply embedded in the experience.
Who is getting it right? Music in action
Lululemon Studio and Mirror: At-home Fitness and Health
When Lululemon acquired Mirror, it marked a shift towards fully connected, at-home fitness where content, coaching and atmosphere converge.
Music plays a key role in making those workouts feel immersive and motivating, especially without a physical studio or shared space. Instructors needed access to curated, commercially licensed music delivered consistently across live and on-demand workouts, while remaining compliant with music rights regulations.
Tuned Global provided Lululemon Studio with a branded playlisting app solution that enabled instructors to curate fully licensed music tailored to each workout. Drawing from a licensed commercial catalogue and supported by usage reporting to rights holders, the system ensured compliance while giving instructors the flexibility to design high-energy, brand-aligned sessions.
The result was a seamless blend of movement, coaching and sound that makes digital workouts feel immersive and premium.
Psycle London: Performance Led Experiences
Boutique fitness studio Psycle London has built a loyal following by transforming workouts into performance-led experiences where music is central to the brand. Each class is choreographed to sound, with instructors designing sessions that build emotional peaks and sustained intensity. As Psycle expanded its digital and on-demand offering, it needed a way to give more than 70 instructors access to fully licensed commercial music while protecting the business from legal and reputational risk.
Tuned Global delivered a branded playlisting app that enabled Psycle’s instructors to search a cleared commercial catalogue by artist, genre or BPM, preview full tracks and build tailored playlists for classes ranging from high-intensity rides to strength and conditioning. Behind the scenes, the music is delivered through secure API infrastructure integrated into Psycle’s own platform, with automated reporting to rights holders and support across label and publishing negotiations.
By combining creative flexibility with licensing governance, Psycle were able to scale its music-led experience across studio and digital environments without compromising on brand integrity, compliance or operational control.
Steezy: Movement and Music
Steezy, one of the world’s leading online dance platforms, sits at the intersection of sport, movement and music.
For dancers, music is not background sound. It defines timing, style and expression. As Steezy scaled internationally, music became both its greatest asset and its biggest operational challenge. Delivering classes built around commercial tracks created both operational complexity and significant licensing risk.
Tuned Global provided the licensed music catalogue delivery infrastructure that enabled Steezy instructors to search a cleared catalogue, curate playlists tailored to specific classes, and prepare sessions using full commercial tracks. The system ensured that music used across Steezy’s app and desktop platform was properly licensed and reported to rights holders, supporting global expansion without exposing the business or its creators to legal liability.
By combining instructor-friendly tooling with robust licensing governance, Steezy was able to continue growing its international dance community while keeping music at the centre of the experience.
UFC Ultimate Sound: MMA Culture
UFC Ultimate Sound launched as a fan-centric music and media app that broadens the reach of MMA culture beyond the octagon. Fans could explore curated playlists, exclusive audio content and branded experiences tied to UFC events, athletes and community moments, all within a custom digital environment.
Tuned Global powered the licensed music and media infrastructure that enabled the app to deliver commercial music and audio content securely at scale.
By managing catalogue access, rights clearance and usage reporting, the platform helped support a fully compliant music experience that aligned with UFC’s brand values and global audience expectations. This allowed the app to combine dynamic music programming with engaging content, giving fans a deeper, immersive way to connect with the sport.
Music-driven engagement extends into the border wellness ecosystem
Peloton turned instructors into tastemakers, using music-led classes to build community and drive subscription growth. Nike has explored music-fuelled storytelling and athlete content across digital channels. Major football clubs use tailored sound design and playlists to enhance stadium atmosphere and fan rituals.
In esports and gaming, music deepens immersion and extends session time, while in wellness and recovery, carefully curated soundscapes support mental health outcomes.
For wellness, sports, fitness and leisure operators considering deeper music integration, a few principles stand out.
First, treat music as a product feature. It should support the outcome you want, whether that is higher intensity, calm recovery, emotional connection or brand recognition.
Second, get licensing right from day one. Using consumer streaming services in commercial environments exposes brands to legal and reputational risk.
For example, In 2019, more than 20 music publishing groups filed a $150 million copyright lawsuit against Peloton, alleging the company used more than 1000 unlicensed songs in its workout videos.
In another example, just last year the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia ordered a Sydney gym chain owner and five of his companies to pay more than $235,000 in damages and interest after operating multiple locations without a valid OneMusic licence.
Third, give creators freedom while maintaining brand control. Instructors, coaches and athletes bring personality, so give them tools to curate music safely within brand guidelines.
Last but not least, use data to refine the experience.
Track how music impacts engagement, completion rates and retention, because music is measurable. Finally, think cross-platform. Your music strategy should work across physical venues, mobile apps, connected devices and on-demand content. Consistency builds trust.
The future of music meets fitness, wellness and performance
Music in wellness will become even more adaptive. As AI, biofeedback and real-time analytics become more embedded in fitness technology, music will increasingly respond dynamically to heart rate, pace or emotional state. Early implementations in health and performance environments are already demonstrating how adaptive music can optimise outcomes.
As wearable technology and connected fitness continue to evolve, music will play an increasingly central role in shaping personalised experiences. The infrastructure choices operators make now will determine how easily they can adopt these capabilities later. Those who invest early in licensed, data-informed music systems will be best placed to innovate without risk.
Music is a performance tool, a brand asset and a powerful lever for engagement. The examples above show that this applies at every scale, from a single boutique studio to a global combat sports brand. The most successful innovators understand that when music and movement align, something special happens. With the right technology and licensing in place, that can scale.
About Con Raso, Managing Director of Tuned Global
Con Raso is an entrepreneur passionate about innovation, new technologies, and start-ups. Over the last few decades he has focused on creating innovative mobile and online distribution models within the B2C entertainment market, enabling brands to utilise music as a marketing tool, via unique customer engagement strategies. Being inherently well-versed in both technology and music, Con ensures our solutions are aesthetically pleasing, engaging and disruptive.
About Tuned Global
Tuned Global is the leading data-driven Cloud Music Platform that empowers businesses to integrate commercial music into their apps or launch complete streaming experiences using advanced APIs, real-time analytics, licensing solutions, music intelligence and customisable white-label apps.
Our turnkey solutions for music, audio, and video, coupled with a broad ecosystem of third-party music tech integrations, make us the most comprehensive platform for powering digital music projects. We streamline complexities in licensing, rights management, content delivery and music discovery, enabling rapid innovation and bringing new ideas to life.
Since 2011, we’ve supported 40+ companies in 70+ countries — across telecom, fitness, media, aviation, and more — to deliver innovative music experiences faster and more cost-effectively. For more information, visit www.tunedglobal.com.