Ask these of us too. The answers tell you more than any feature grid.
A consumer streaming account is not, no matter how many locations you have or how much you pay for it. A commercial service should cover ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR, and should say so plainly. If you have to dig for the answer, that is the answer.
Some services hand you a large catalog and an algorithm. Others build programs by hand. Neither is automatically right. An algorithm is quick to set up and fine for a lot of rooms. Human curation is what you want when the music is part of how the brand reads, and when a lobby at 8 a.m. should not sound like the same lobby at 9 p.m.
Check this against the hardware you already own. A browser tab is enough for a single cafe. A hotel with an existing AV rack needs something that speaks to it. If a provider only runs on their own player, budget for their player.
Ask how a change gets pushed everywhere at once, how zones are handled inside one building, and whether the schedule adjusts on its own. Anything that needs a person to log in per site does not survive a rollout.
Silence in a room full of customers is the only failure that matters. Find out who answers, how fast, and whether they know your account.
If you want one vendor handling music, screens, TV, and scent on a single invoice, a full media company covers more ground than we do. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
If the deciding factor is the lowest possible monthly price for one room, there are cheaper places to land.
Where we are worth a conversation: the music is part of how people read the brand, you have more than one room or more than one location, and you would rather it was handled by people who do this all day.