In-store radio for multi-site retail & leisure.
A fully branded station, delivered live to every site in your estate, scheduled around your trading hours and carrying your own adverts and announcements. It sounds just like a real radio station… because it is.
In-store radio
Music that sounds like somebody chose it.
Sonair runs in-store radio for retail, leisure and education venues across the UK and Europe. Music matched to the room, your own adverts and announcements running through it, and nothing for your team to manage.
What you get
More than a playlist left running.
Three things that separate proper in-store radio from a streaming account and a pair of speakers.
Mixed, not shuffled
Tracks segued and levelled by people who did it for stations, with imaging between them. It sounds like a station because it's built like one.
Your voice in the mix
Adverts, offers and announcements produced properly and dropped in at the times you choose. Different message, different site, different hour.
Changes with the day
Quieter through the morning, lifting into peak trade, winding down at close. Set once and it follows your trading hours on its own.
Who hears it most
Your customers are in for an hour. Your staff are in all day.
In-store music is usually sold on the customer experience. But the person it affects most is the one who can't walk out — and repetition that a customer never notices becomes very hard to ignore across a nine-hour shift.
That's what a playlist does eventually: it's finite, it's ordered, and it comes back round. A station is built differently. Tracks are categorised, scheduled on clockwheels and separated by artist, so there's no running order to learn — and we keep the music moving so it never settles.
What you can see
Every site, every play, on one screen.
You get a portal, not a black box — useful when someone upstairs asks whether the campaign actually ran.
Live across the estate
See what's playing right now at every site, and whether each one is online. We monitor the players too, so we usually spot a problem before you do.
Full play history
Every track and every message, logged and searchable by site and by date. If someone asks what was on last Saturday afternoon, you can tell them.
Proof it ran
Per-site confirmation for every promotion — where it aired, when, and how many times. Evidence for the campaign, not a best guess.
Getting started
How your station gets on air.
Tell us about the room
What you do, who comes in, how it should feel at ten in the morning versus eight at night. Bring us tracks you love and we'll work them in.
We build the sound
Music selected for the venue, imaging produced, your messaging written and voiced. You hear it before anyone else does.
It goes on and stays on
Connect any internet-enabled device to your existing system and it runs from open to close. No sound system? We install one.
Questions
The things people ask first.
What's the difference between in-store radio and a background music service?
A background music service hands you playlists — a finite list that plays through and starts again, so the same tracks come round in the same order. In-store radio is built the way a broadcast station is: tracks are categorised, scheduled on clockwheels and separated by artist, with produced imaging and your own announcements between them. Nothing repeats predictably, and there's no running order for anyone to learn.
Do I need to build playlists?
No. That's the job you're handing over. Send us a few tracks you'd like included and we'll take care of everything else, including refreshing the music regularly so it never settles into a loop.
Do I need new hardware?
Usually not. If you have a sound system with a PC, tablet or player attached, you're ready. Everything runs from the cloud, so an internet connection is the only requirement. If there's no system in place, we install one.
Can I see what's actually playing?
Yes. The portal shows every site live, keeps a full searchable history of what played and when, and gives you per-site confirmation that each promotion aired.
Can the sound change through the day?
Yes, and it does so on its own. Set what should play when and it follows your trading hours without anyone touching it.
Who records the announcements?
People. Every advert and announcement is voiced and produced by humans, with real regional accents where you want them. We don't use AI voices.
How long does setup take?
It depends on the size of the estate and what's already installed. A single venue with a working sound system is straightforward; a national rollout is planned around your schedule and your sites' availability. Tell us when you need to be on air and we'll work back from that date.
Is there a trial?
Thirty days, with the full service rather than a cut-down version. Get in touch and we'll set it up.
Can you run it across multiple sites?
Yes. Sites can be grouped by region, format or brand, so a national message can run everywhere while individual venues keep their own local announcements.
Get started
Let's hear what your venue could sound like.
Tell us how many sites you're running and what's on the walls already. Thirty days, no charge, no cut-down version.
