Vevo Brings Premium Music Videos to MULO Brands

Vevo is bringing its premium music videos into brick-and-mortar businesses through a new partnership with Rockbot, giving MULO brands another way to create more engaging and consistent in-store experiences

For multi-location brands, the in-store experience is becoming an increasingly important competitive differentiator. While digital channels continue to dominate customer acquisition, what happens inside a physical location often determines whether customers stay longer, spend more, and return. As a result, operators are investing in technologies that help create more engaging, immersive, and consistent experiences across every location in their network.

That trend received another boost this week as Vevo announced an exclusive partnership with Rockbot to bring premium, professionally curated music video programming into commercial venues nationwide. The agreement makes Rockbot the first platform to offer Vevo’s music videos for business environments, giving restaurants, retailers, fitness centers, hospitality companies, and other multi-location operators access to centrally managed, ad-free programming designed specifically for commercial use.

In-Store Media Becomes a Brand Asset

The partnership introduces six curated Vevo channels at launch. The three channels of Rock, Hip-Hop, and Dance are organized by genre, while Day, Night, and Late Night are programmed around customer traffic patterns and the changing atmosphere businesses want to create throughout the day. The channels will also be available alongside Rockbot’s broader portfolio of news, sports, lifestyle, family, and ambient programming, allowing brands to build entertainment experiences that align with their audience, operating hours, and brand identity.

Rather than asking individual locations to create playlists or manage entertainment independently, the platform enables brands to deploy professionally curated programming across an entire location network while maintaining centralized oversight. That approach helps ensure customers receive a consistent brand experience regardless of which location they visit while reducing the operational burden placed on store managers and franchisees.

As customer expectations continue to evolve, entertainment is becoming more than background ambience. Alongside digital signage, lighting, and store design, media is increasingly viewed as another touchpoint that influences how customers perceive a brand, how long they remain engaged inside a location, and ultimately how memorable the overall customer experience becomes.

Location Management at Scale

Rockbot currently powers entertainment and media experiences across more than 50,000 business locations, serving national brands including Best Buy, Planet Fitness, Shake Shack, Lucky Strike, and Great Wolf Lodge. Its platform enables businesses to centrally manage music, television programming, and digital signage while allowing individual locations to adjust programming based on local audiences, regional preferences, or dayparting requirements.

That balance between centralized governance and localized flexibility has become increasingly important for franchise organizations and enterprise retailers. National marketing teams want every location to reinforce the same brand standards, while local operators need the ability to adapt experiences to reflect local audiences, seasonal demand, or regional preferences.

Under the partnership, Vevo’s music video channels become another centrally managed content option that can be deployed consistently across hundreds or thousands of locations without increasing operational complexity.

Garrett Dodge, CEO and co-founder of Rockbot, said businesses require a fundamentally different streaming experience than consumers, emphasizing the importance of licensed, commercial-free programming that reflects a brand while remaining easy to manage across large location networks. He said adding Vevo’s music video catalog allows companies to match entertainment to the energy of different times of day while controlling programming across one location or an entire enterprise from a single platform.

Physical Locations Become a New Premium Video Channel

For Vevo, the partnership represents more than another distribution agreement. It reflects the company’s belief that premium video consumption is no longer confined to connected televisions, computers, or smartphones, but is increasingly extending into the physical spaces where consumers shop, dine, exercise, and socialize.

Speaking with Street Fight, Natalie Gabathuler-Scully, Executive Vice President of Revenue, Distribution & Data Operations at Vevo, said consumers no longer think about premium content in terms of channels or devices. Instead, they expect high-quality viewing experiences wherever they are, creating new opportunities for premium publishers to reach audiences beyond the living room.

Gabathuler-Scully said bringing professionally curated music videos into brick-and-mortar businesses is part of a broader evolution in content distribution that recognizes physical spaces as an increasingly important extension of the premium video ecosystem.

That perspective aligns with broader changes taking place across retail, restaurants, hospitality, and fitness. As consumers spend more time engaging with digital content outside the home, businesses are looking for professionally managed programming that enhances the customer experience while reinforcing their own brand identity. For multi-location operators, entertainment is becoming another strategic touchpoint that can be centrally managed alongside digital signage, promotions, and other in-store media.

Experience Is Becoming a Marketing Channel

The announcement highlights how enterprise media platforms continue evolving beyond background music services. Today’s platforms increasingly combine music, digital signage, television programming, promotional messaging, and branded content into unified systems that can be managed centrally across an entire organization.

That convergence creates new opportunities for marketing and operations teams alike. Marketing leaders gain another channel for reinforcing brand identity inside the store, while operations teams benefit from standardized programming that reduces complexity and improves consistency across every location. Franchise organizations, meanwhile, can better ensure that independently operated locations continue delivering experiences aligned with overall brand standards.

The shift also reflects a broader change in how brands think about physical locations. Stores, restaurants, fitness centers, and hospitality venues are increasingly viewed as owned media environments where every customer touchpoint—from digital displays and promotional messaging to music and video programming—contributes to brand perception and customer engagement. As businesses compete to differentiate physical experiences from online shopping and digital-first competitors, enterprise-managed in-store media is becoming an increasingly important part of the marketing technology stack.

Why It Matters

The Vevo-Rockbot partnership is about more than bringing music videos to commercial televisions. It signals how premium content providers and enterprise technology platforms increasingly view brick-and-mortar businesses as strategic distribution channels rather than simply commercial venues.

The ability to centrally manage entertainment, digital media, and customer-facing content across every location reflects a broader shift in how brands view their physical footprint. Stores are increasingly becoming an extension of both the brand experience and the premium media ecosystem, shaping how customers engage with brands long after they walk through the front door.