With an integrated audio/video playback system like YCD’s MuMa, which Essential Communications provides, users can create customized sonic environments for their venue. Like other software-based music players, MuMa allows users to store thousands of music pieces and organize them into easily manageable libraries. But MuMa’s robust, fool-proof operation makes it suitable for mission-critical commercial environments. There is one slight drawback, Essential Communications founder and president David Schwartz points out. “MuMa’s not cheap. You’ve got to pay for the software, buy the music and pay the license. But it has no restrictions in terms of creativity.”

Essential Communications is constantly investigating new music distribution methods and tracking locations where music might enhance the environment. With its music supervision services, Essential Communications lifts the burden of creating the perfect sonic atmosphere for its clients, making it possible for them to focus on running their business. “We want to create positive associations with the products that our clients are selling, and music is one of the ways that we do it,” Schwartz comments. “The most appropriate way is having the right style of music playing at the right time of day, and nothing beats having an appliance to do that.”

The Trusonic is one way Schwartz solves his clients’ music supervision problems. The system consists of a hardware box installed in their environment, which connects both to their sound system and to Trusonic’s central music server in California via high-speed Internet. Store, restaurant and hotel owners using the system can easily interact with it via the intuitive online interface called Music Manager, which allows for convenient programmed play and song-selection features, daily modifications to schedules and more. “It solves the physical transfer problem,” Schwartz says. “We don’t have to touch it. I can put it in a closet and know that at 7:00 every morning it’s going to come on, and it will play exactly what we want it to play at that time. Trusonic is a music delivery service – the delivery is where it shines and, in my eyes, sometimes the delivery outweighs the content itself.” Music supervisors at Trusonic in turn select and license the music for the playlists, which runs the gamut from classical to techno.