Atmosphere TV Competitor Analysis
Many businesses claim to provide completely free entertainment content for your business’s TV screens then hit you with inactivity fees or require monthly subscriptions for premium options.
It can be tricky for business owners to find the right platform to use on their business’s TVs, especially if they are looking for a truly free service.
Both Atmosphere TV and Loop TV provide a library of entertainment content with digital signage options that are advertised as free. Yet, only one of these options doesn’t hit you with additional costs on the back end.
Let’s look at the details of each brand to help you make a good decision for your company.
Product Features
There are many factors to consider when choosing an entertainment platform with options in digital signage for your business’s screens.
Music, entertainment, and interactive gaming content can draw customers into your business or ease stress during wait times. What you show on the screen will influence your customer’s behaviors. So, choosing the best provider is an important decision.
To make the best choice, you need to consider your ability to customize your digital messaging, the library of entertainment content, customer service, interactivity, and the price of the service.
Atmosphere TV and Loop TV offer similar products, but there are some clear differences between the two.
1. Digital Messaging Customizability
Atmosphere TV is a rapidly growing company. They are an offshoot of the company ChiveTV.
You can use Atmosphere TV to promote your business through personalized ads. Businesses can replace 3rd party ads with their own promotions and digital messages. You can also pay extra to push your ads into other businesses that use Atmosphere TV.
With a pro-tier plan, you can customize your digital message through the online dashboard. Here you can upload your business’s content, schedule your content to play at certain times and track your marketing. This gives you the ability to add your own marketing content to the preexisting platform.
On the other hand, Loop TV provides all of these services for free without a subscription. Loop TV is a free music video, business TV, and digital signage servicethat plays non-competing, 3rd party ads intermittently. These ads are designed to be non-intrusive.
They play simultaneously alongside music videos instead of interrupting playback. Since Loop TV is ad-supported, it is a completely free service that allows you to schedule your digital message to play between content.
Loop TV’s digital signage is easily customizable and is included as part of the free service. You can upload your digital messages, schedule them to play intermittently between videos, and edit playlists to suit your business’s brand.
2. Audio-optional Content vs. Library of Fully Licenced Music Videos
Atmosphere TV provides 60+ audio-optional channels. These are channels where the content can be played without the audio.
This type of entertainment content is designed for noisy or busy businesses like airports, gyms, and laundromats. These audio-optional channels don’t cover the content with annoying subtitles that are slightly off from the sound. So, the objective is to catch the eye rather than the ear.
Their content is free with intermittent ads playing between videos. To stream this content, your business needs a TV, WIFI, and power. The content plays on Apple streaming devices rather than from a separate media player sent by the company.
Their content is family-friendly and made to be engaging. Some of the channels available include ChiveTV, Red Bull TV, Deep Dive, and many more. News, sports, weather, and children’s channels are also included in the lineup.
Atmosphere TV serves over 50,000 businesses in 35 countries. Yet, the sheer amount of entertainment that Loop TV provides, in comparison, is staggering.
Loop TV has over 200 channels of entertainment with 100+ of those being fully-licensed music videos. Since Atmosphere TV emphasizes audio-optional content, they have NO music videos.
Music influences buying habits in customers. Even background music can subconsciously affect how your customer acts in your business, whether that be their mood as they shop or their buying habits.
In addition, music streaming is incredibly popular throughout the US. In 2022, 84% of the music industry’s revenue came from streaming music. So, eliminating music from your business’s culture is a missed opportunity to promote your brand.
That’s why Loop TV’s extensive music collection is such a powerful feature of this free streaming platform. The content covers many genres from country to rap to pop to classic rock.
There are channels specifically catered to certain environments, such as gyms or restaurants. You can also select channels that play only a single band, such as the Beatles channel.
You don’t have to worry about getting blindsided by elicit content because you can customize the playlists you show in the online portal. You can check ratings, look over song options, add songs to playlists that aren’t already there, and remove any you don’t want playing in your business.
Loop partners with many of the top companies in the music business to provide you with exclusive videos that will have your customers glued to your screens.
They also have a large selection of entertainment channels. Loop TV has exclusive rights to Wiggles TV, which plays the beloved children’s music group non-stop. Kids will be wiggling and singing along as they wait for an appointment or shop with their parents.
You can keep your customers up-to-date on entertainment news, trending headlines, and business news through Loop TV’s news channels. You don’t have to worry about people seeing the news channel of choice on your screen and making a split decision about your brand. Instead, they will get news that is free from big companies.
If your target audience likes sports, Loop TV offers boxing, pro wrestling, tennis, college basketball, college football, extreme sports, and surfing channels for your customers.
These are perfect for sports bars. There is also a sports ticker widget that runs along the bottom of your screens with all the major league sports news, scores, and games.
Loop TV also has a large selection of lifestyle channels that pair well with your business model. From fashion to food, these are excellent on the screens inside your business. Restaurants can play cooking videos and gyms can play fitness videos to target your audience’s interests.
There are also viral video channels, drone footage, and movie trailers. So, customers feel up-to-date, relaxed, and entertained no matter the channels you show.
3. Around-the-Clock Customer Service
When you are having trouble getting your business’s streaming device to work, you want to know that the platform you choose has your back. Both Atmosphere TV and Loop TV provide customer service that is accessible through their websites.
You can access Atmosphere TV’s technical support page via their website. Here you can find the answers to the most frequently asked questions about your account and services.
There is a one-minute video detailing how to setup up your device with Atmosphere TV, if you need help with initial setup. You can also call the company to talk to a representative to get additional help.
Loop has 24/7 customer service. You can call, email, or chat online with a representative by checking out the company’s website. In addition, Loop has open-source tech support with tons of information to help you navigate through any problems that may arise.
In addition, on YouTube, you can access videos to help walk through many of the common problems customers come across when they install the media player.
Excellent customer service ensures that you can provide your customers with a flawless experience.
4. Interactive Content
Interactive content creates a relationship between the business and the customer. This helps to promote a positive impression of the business and sparks customer loyalty.
Many businesses utilize the gamification of content to engage their customers and employees. Recent statistics suggest that gamification of content increases employee productivity by 50%.
There are many different ways to do this, but both Atmosphere TV and Loop TV offer trivia as part of their interactive media.
Atmosphere TV has trivia, word scramble, and 4 card monte to engage customers. Atmosphere Trivia channel includes quizzes, puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers.
Loop TV’s Trivia Loop, in comparison, has non-stop, around-the-clock quizzes with questions from 8 different categories. These categories include Music, Sports, TV and Films, History, Science and Nature, Art and Literature, Geography, and Wild Card.
There’s something for every type of customer in the mix so adults and children alike can get in on the fun. Or, if you want to cater your business’s trivia more tightly, you can select Trivia Loop All Sports or Trivia Loop All Music channels.
These fun and exciting around-the-clock quizzes are perfect for customers waiting in lines or sitting in your establishment enjoying a meal. Interactive quizzes keep customers coming back for more by promoting a fun and engaging atmosphere in your business.
You can also use trivia to incentivize your employees, promoting an open, fun climate in the workplace. Interactivity is a simple way to bring people together around your business.
5. Free vs. “Free”
A lot of companies claim to have free services, but then hit you with surprise costs and fees. It’s important to understand how different entertainment content and digital signage platforms operate to understand which are truly free and which are free with an asterisk.
Atmosphere TV provides over 60 audio-optional channels. They claim to be the #1 streaming service for businesses and a great alternative to cable TV. Their rapidly growing company strives to drive up sales through their content.
However, when you go to sign-up for this “free” service, what you find is that you need a credit card to get started. Once you’ve provided your credit card information and are ready to start streaming, you are hit with a $199.99 one-time setup fee.
After that, as long as you stream at least 40 hours a month, you can receive free streaming of entertainment channels. This is the basic tier. If you don’t meet that 40-hour-a-month quota, you will get charged a $ 20-a-month inactivity fee.
In addition, you can only customize your digital signage once you pay for the pro tier, which is $50 a month. The pro tier is also the only option where you get to customize your digital signage.
This is an awful lot of money for a platform that claims to offer free streaming entertainment for businesses.
Loop TV, in contrast, is a completely free service. You do not need a credit card to sign up. In fact, signing up is as simple as inputting your business’s information into Loop’s website.
As long as you have an open-to-business location, you will receive a free Loop TV media player. Loop provides services to all 50 states with 2 billion monthly views nationwide.
Your media player will be shipped to you in as little as 2-3 business days, once again, free of charge. Then, to install the media player in your business, all you need is a TV, power source, and Loop’s media player, which hooks into your TV with an HDMI cord.
Setting up is easy. Then, your business has access to over 200+ channels of entertainment content with options for adding your digital message.
Stream More for Less
Although Atmosphere TV provides 60+ audio-optional channels meant to increase new business by 14%, their services are backloaded with lots of set-up fees and penalties for low, hourly usage.
LoopTV is completely free whether you use it for 2 hours a week or 42 hours a week. They also do not ask for a credit card to sign up. Loop TV’s 200+ channels of exclusive, entertaining content are complete with over 100 fully licensed hand-curated music channels.
When it comes to choosing the best free, entertainment content and digital signage platform for your business’s screens, both Atmosphere TV and Loop TV have a lot to offer. Yet, when you stack the two side by side, it’s easy to see that Loop TV offers more for less.