An Introduction to Music’s Growing Role in the Wellness Industry

Introduction

The global wellness economy is currently growing 1.5 times faster than the rate of the global consumer economy.^[1] More and more people are prioritizing their health and well-being, and wellness companies are stepping up to fill this rising demand. As the wellness economy grows, and more companies are being created, more of a space has been made for music to become part of this growth. Music has long been proven to relieve stress, improve one’s physical health, and help humans cope with grief.^[2] This article will explore three different instances across the wellness sector where music’s use is innovating & supporting wellness brands and consumers.

Peloton – Soundtracking Workouts

Peloton is a fitness company that provides machines & independent class programs for its members. It is known for its flexibility & wide variety of options, and its at-home workout business model flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[3] Each of Peloton’s classes, whether on their exclusive Bike, Tread, or online classes, feature playlists, often curated by the fitness instructors themselves.

Peloton’s engagement options regarding music are quite extensive. Members can download playlists, request songs, and find new music all within the online platform – on the Bike, Tread, or on a mobile device. Peloton features its own annual music festival, “All For One”, within its classes. Like typical music festivals, the company lists a lineup of artists.^[4] “All For One” classes are themed around these artists & their music–sometimes even actually featuring them in-person at their live studio classes. Peloton’s Track Love feature, introduced in 2020, allows members to “love” their choice songs on workouts they join, and automatically saves their songs to a playlist on their Spotify or Apple Music profile. ^[5]

Peloton, in order to legally feature this music, has gone on quite a journey. In 2019, the company was sued for copyright infringement. The suit, seeking over $300 million in damages, alleged they had not obtained proper sync licenses for over 2,000 songs featured in their workout programs.^[6] Since then, the suit has been settled, and proper licensing deals have been struck with all major record labels along with some larger independent ones.^[7]

Peloton has clearly created one of the largest fitness-related spaces for music and wellness to interact. As of 2022, Peloton licenses over 4 million tracks.^[8] According to Goldman Sach’s Music In The Air report of 2023, Peloton actually paid the music industry more than TikTok did. Both of these platforms were considered to be “emerging platforms” , a category making up 14 percent of the record industry’s total revenue.^[9]

As a major contributor to the recording industry’s revenue, Peloton is a prominent example of a growing space for music to exist and thrive within the fitness sector of the wellness industry.

Calm – Enhancing Wellness Apps

Wellness apps such as Calm focus on benefiting users’ mental health through meditation & mindfulness, featuring music and calming soundscapes. Calm utilizes music and artists in unique and new ways, featuring bedtime stories^[10], exclusive in-app music releases^[11], and more. Its content is created to assist users with meditation, mindfulness, and sleep. Calm’s content is mostly available behind a paywall, but features several different payment plans depending on how each customer intends to use the app.^[12]According to Sacra, a research platform for private markets, “As Calm has transitioned from largely free content to mostly paid content and improved their conversion rate, they have become the #1 health and fitness app by consumer spend around the world.”^[13]

Calm, an app with over 50 million downloads^[14], features personalizable music options, ranging from curated & manually created playlists to natural ambiences. Calm features over 15 different types of rain sounds, and more unique options, such as submarine ambience.^[15] The efficacy of Calm has been tested and proven to help the mental health of college students who participated in an 8-week study while using the app. Students found that their stress levels were reduced, and mindfulness and self-compassion levels improved.^[16]

Calm has taken on a different approach to bringing music to consumers. Through its exclusive music library, it is considered a streaming service. Though its numbers and users are far less than the likes of Spotify or Apple music, the app is certainly making an impact, generating over 135,000,000 streams to date.^[17] Additionally, Calm has long been utilizing the voices of popular musicians, one such being Harry Styles, who read aloud a select few of the app’s bedtime stories. Calm is currently collaborating with artists like Styles who are open about and advocates of prioritizing mental health.^[18]

Cross collaboration between musicians & wellness apps such as Calm may be another example of how music is playing a larger, growing role in the wellness industry. In a recent interview with the LA Times, Calm founder Michael Acton Smith noted, “The music industry feels like it’s [at] a really interesting point… It’s a great time to come to artists with creative ideas.”^[19]

Record Label-Driven Startups

Alongside integrating their music into popular wellness apps such as Peloton, record labels are also working with startups to create more movement within the wellness industry. Universal Music Group (UMG)’s Innovation Department does just that; its self-described purpose is to “drive significant ethical and responsible innovation in the music-tech ecosystem, through the development of the next generation of diverse music-related startups and entrepreneurs who accelerate the next wave of transformation.”^[20]

One such startup UMG has worked on is Sollos: an audio-wellness app and venture currently available for free download in the UK.^[21] The app creates curated audio sessions aimed to assist the user’s focus, relaxation, and sleep.^[22] Sollos’s work is entirely backed by and proven to be successful through research.^[23] It regularly conducts in-house research studies, and its music is chosen “based on decades of secondary, peer-reviewed scientific literature on the cognitive impact of different acoustic and compositional properties of audio.”^[24] By utilizing this research alongside algorithms, Sollos adds specialized sound waves to the user’s music in order to assist with their wellness goals. These algorithms used by Sollos are developed internally by the Sollos team and utilize AI/machine learning to both analyze and generate audio. All of the AI used in Sollos’s programming is both created and used by producers who maintain full control/ownership over the finished product.^[25]

Because of the company’s partnership with UMG, Sollos is able to utilize the label’s massive roster of artists and music in its programming, never having to worry about licensing issues or potential lawsuits. Through funding and supporting ventures such as Sollos, Universal Music Group is at the forefront of collaboration opportunities between record labels and music companies, using research and catalogues of music to improve the health of people worldwide.

Conclusion

Through cross-collaboration between music companies and wellness ventures, a growing wellness economy can provide additional spaces for music to exist and thrive. Record labels and individual musicians, through working with rising wellness companies, can provide additional channels of revenue for the recording industry, taking the form of sponsorships, additional royalties, and creative & targeted marketing opportunities. Music has long been connected to the well-being of humans across the world, and as wellness becomes more and more prioritized, music’s space in an alternative industry can become more cemented.

^[1] Authority Magazine Editorial Staff, “Wellness Reimagined: David Knies Of PA Consulting On 5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve And…,” Authority Magazine (blog), July 8, 2024, https://medium.com/authority-magazine/wellness-reimagined-david-knies-of-pa-consulting-on-5-things-that-should-be-done-to-improve-and-372a077f7769.

^[2] Rachel Hajar, “Singing,” Heart Views : The Official Journal of the Gulf Heart Association 22, no. 3 (2021): 233–34, https://doi.org/10.4103/heartviews.heartviews_95_21.

^[3] Jordan Valinsky, “Peloton Sales Surge 172% as People Scrap Gym Memberships for Home Fitness | CNN Business,” accessed April 22, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/11/business/peloton-stock-earnings/index.html.

^[4] “All for One Festival: Celebrate Community with Music & Movement,” accessed April 13, 2025, https://www.onepeloton.com/all-for-one.

^[5] Peloton, “Take Your Favorite Class Tracks Anywhere With Peloton’s New Feature,” The Output, accessed April 13, 2025, https://www.onepeloton.com/blog/peloton-track-love/.

^[6] Chris Perone (#JaxintheSaddle), “Peloton’s Extraordinary Music Licensing Journey: Not Always a Smooth Road,” The Clip Out, August 12, 2023, https://theclipout.com/pelotons-extraordinary-music-licensing-journey-not-always-a-smooth-road/.

^[7] Perone (#JaxintheSaddle).

^[8] Perone (#JaxintheSaddle).

^[9] Tim Ingham, “Peloton Paid the Record Industry More than TikTok Last Year, Says Goldman Sachs (and 3 More Revelations from Its Latest ‘Music In The Air’ Paper),” Music Business Worldwide, July 10, 2023, https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/peloton-paid-the-record-industry-more-than-tiktok-last-year-says-goldman-sachs-in-latest-music-in-the-air/.

^[10] “Drift off to Sleep with Harry Styles,” Calm Blog, accessed April 15, 2025, https://blog.calm.com/blog/drift-off-to-sleep-with-harry-styles.

^[11] “Moby Releases His New Album Exclusively on Calm,” Calm Blog, accessed April 22, 2025, https://blog.calm.com/blog/moby-releases-his-new-album-exclusively-on-calm.

^[12] Steven Rowe, “I Tried Calm to Help Me Sleep—This Was My Experience,” Verywell Mind, accessed April 13, 2025, https://www.verywellmind.com/i-tried-calm-app-for-sleep-7565934.