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When sound drives wellness: Music’s expanding role in femtech
By Con Raso, Managing Director, Tuned Global
Music and technology leaders at Tuned Global, Endel and Bluesound Professional discuss intersection of art, tech, wellness and music.
The intersection of music and wellness is not new, but the shape of it is changing quickly.
Femtech innovation is evolving fast, and the decisions innovators make around content, technology, and licensing are creating a genuinely new kind of music business.
This space was explored during a panel at the 2025 Music Tectonics conference in Santa Monica, with other companies whose approaches to wellness music share very little in common beyond the category label.
The session, moderated by Andrew Stess, Head of Sales and Business Development for North America at music cloud platform Tuned Global, drew out a conversation between Graeme Harrison, Vice President & General Manager of Bluesound Professional, and Marina Guz, Chief Commercial Officer with Endel.
Stess opened with a deliberately broad question: what is wellness? The answers illustrated just how wide the category has become.
For context, Bluesound Professional makes networked audio hardware deployed across a range of environments, from gyms to hospitals to corporate offices.
The company works with services including Composure, which targets sleep improvement for people with dementia, and MoodSonic, which applies biophilic soundscaping to workplace environments.
“Wellness is different things to different services,” Bluesound Professional’s Harrison said.
“Fit Radio would look at wellness as being gyms and exercise and that sort of thing. Composure is about helping people with dementia, specifically sleep, go to sleep and stay asleep.
“With MoodSonic, wellness is all about the well workplace, getting well-certified and employee engagement, creating activity-based work where you can go to different areas of a workplace to achieve what you want; focus, relaxation, creativity, whatever.”
Endel’s Guz came at the question from a different angle.
The company generates AI-powered soundscapes for focus, relaxation, sleep and meditation, each personalised to the user’s biometric inputs.
“Can you sleep? Can you deal with stress? Are you grounded? What’s your general mindset towards things?” she said. “That’s what Endel is trying to really help you with.”
Art, Tech and Science
Marina Guz
For Endel, the music model is a little different from other music businesses.
Every soundscape is generated in real time, drawn from stems produced by Endel’s internal composers or in collaboration with external artists, and assembled dynamically based on user inputs including heart rate, time of day, weather, and movement.
“We always like to say we live at the intersection of tech, art, and science,” Guz said.
“The team has gone out and done a lot of research, we collaborate with a lot of scientists and researchers in the space to really understand what kind of sounds we need to play for you to fall asleep vs stay asleep vs when you wake up.”
The company’s founding team had musical backgrounds, including a neoclassical composer who has released on Decca, and a CEO whose deep interest in Brian Eno shaped the company’s foundational approach.
That grounding in composition distinguishes Endel’s output from what Guz sees as the broader wellness music category on streaming platforms.
The company’s first major artist collaboration was with Grimes. Since then it has worked with James Blake, Miguel, and others, building soundscapes that carry an artist’s sonic identity while adhering to scientific guidelines for the intended use case.
Endel was also, according to Guz, the first AI music company to sign deals with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
The personalisation goes further than most listeners would expect.
Two people pressing play on the same Endel soundscape at the same time will hear different outputs, because the system continuously adapts to each user’s biometric state.
“If you and I, we’re in different locations, different age, different sex. Maybe you’re sitting down and walking around at different heart rates. Your soundscape will sound different than my soundscape because it will get personalised to the inputs that you give it,” Guz said.
“No track, no soundscape is ever the same in the app. It always gets generated on the fly for you in the moment based on the inputs.”
Hardware, Artists, and the AI Problem
Stess, whose work at Tuned Global is built around helping fitness, wellness and other companies navigate the complex music streaming and licensing space, steered the conversation toward implementation. The theory was covered.
Andrew Stess
What does the infrastructure look like in practice, and where do artists fit in it?
Harrison brought up the delivery layer, something the panel hadn’t dwelled on yet.
Bluesound Professional makes networked audio hardware that sits at the endpoint of everything the other two companies build, and there’s more going on there than the word “hardware” suggests.
Their devices are individually addressable network speakers, which means a service like MoodSonic can pull in real-time occupancy levels, temperature, and time of day to shift a workplace soundscape on the fly.
Their work with Composure goes further, using pillow sensors to measure sleep quality in dementia patients and adapting the audio output accordingly.
Harrison also raised something that landed quietly in the room: Model Context Protocol.
Developed initially by Anthropic and later adopted by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, it’s a standard that lets agentic AI communicate directly with connected devices.
When he asked who in the audience knew what it was, only a handful of hands went up.
“It completely subverts the controller interface,” he said.
“That means that we can control all of our devices via our AI agent of choice.”
On the question of where artists fit, Stess put it directly: how do you build something sustainable in wellness? Guz’s answer was blunt.
Much of the wellness streaming world runs on ghost producers and fake artist profiles built to generate playlist placements rather than careers.
“It’s all kind of ghost producers, fake artists that populate these playlists,” she said.
“On that side of the world, there can still be a lot done to promote more artists who want to actually move into the space.”
Endel is now launching Sources, a label dedicated to artist-centric wellness music, signing neoclassical and ambient artists who make the music but lack the platform.
Graeme Harrison
“We are signing just small artists, because there are a lot of amazing neoclassical artists who make music in the space, but they don’t really have a platform,” Guz said.
“We’re launching something that is really just humans making music for the space, no science, no tech, no anything, because that’s what’s really missing, at least on the streaming side of the business.”
Guz also flagged a complication specific to Endel.
The company has worked with AI since before it became a loaded term, and that history has become a liability.
The early collaborations with Grimes, James Blake, and Miguel drew real attention when generative soundscapes with named artists were still a novelty.
That novelty has since been swamped by a flood of low-effort AI-generated content filling wellness playlists across every major platform.
“AI is associated, especially in the wellness space, with slop,” she said.
“So much content, cover artwork, is being generated, and everything looks terrible and a lot of it sounds terrible, and so we are being grouped into that same thing, even though we’re really not [that] at all”
The questions the panel kept returning to, around licensing, metadata, artist engagement, and the AI content quality problem, are the sort Tuned Global works through with clients building music into health and wellness products.
The wellness music space is growing, the licensing challenges are real, and the opportunity for artists willing to engage seriously with it is there.
The infrastructure, whether hardware, soundscape technology, or a fitness platform’s back end, is further along than most of the music industry has noticed.
About Con Raso, Managing Director of Tuned Global
Con Raso is an entrepreneur passionate about innovation, new technologies, and start-ups.
Over the last few decades he has focused on creating innovative mobile and online distribution models within the B2C entertainment market, enabling brands to utilise music as a marketing tool, via unique customer engagement strategies.
Being inherently well-versed in both technology and music, Con ensures our solutions are aesthetically pleasing, engaging and disruptive.
About Tuned Global
Tuned Global is the data-driven music cloud platform that empowers businesses to integrate commercial music into their apps and launch complete streaming experiences using advanced APIs, real-time analytics, licensing solutions, rights management systems, Ai-enabled music discovery, and customisable white-label streaming apps.
Our turnkey solutions for music, audio, and video — coupled with advanced AI capabilities and a broad ecosystem of third-party music tech integrations — make us the most comprehensive platform for powering any digital music project.
We streamline complexities in licensing, rights management, and content delivery, enabling rapid innovation and bringing new ideas to life. Since 2011, we’ve supported 40+ companies in 70+ countries — across telecom, gaming, fitness, health, media, aviation, and more — to deliver innovative music experiences faster and more cost-effectively.
Learn more at tunedglobal.com
Elation Health has acquired Aster, a women’s health EHR startup created by sisters Fifi Kara and Dr Lailah Kara-Newton.
The deal, announced on 3 June 2026, will see Aster’s team join Elation Health as the company expands development of what it describes as the first agentic operating system for primary care.
An EHR, or electronic health record, is a digital system used by healthcare providers to store and manage patient information.
Aster was founded by Kara and Kara-Newton as an AI-native EHR platform for women’s health providers.
Elation Health said the acquisition would allow Aster to learn from its expertise in AI agents and support development of its agentic operating system for primary care.
Kyna Fong, co-founder and chief executive of Elation Health, said: “The Aster team impressed us with their vision and creative inventions to support independent practices.”
Fong said Elation, like Aster, was founded by siblings who wanted to change the healthcare system.
She added: “That shared north star means they understand what we’re building and why it matters. It was clear right away they would significantly add to our capabilities.”
Kara has spent 10 years creating consumer and business-to-business products across the UK, Europe and the US, and recently supported Meta’s Health & Fitness team, according to Aster’s website.
Kara-Newton previously worked as a hospital doctor in the NHS across medical and surgical specialties, including breast surgery, general surgery, emergency medicine and obstetrics and gynaecology.
Aster launched in 2023 after raising US$2.8m from Zeal Capital Partners, Cornerstone Ventures, Octopus Ventures and others.
Kara, Kara-Newton and Aster’s chief technology officer, Nacho Vazquez, will all join Elation.
Kara said: “From the moment we met Kyna Fong, Ashley Rogers, and the Elation leadership team, it was clear we were aligned on what matters most: that clinicians deserve truly incredible software that brings joy back to their practice. Together, we can now bring that vision to millions of primary care patients across the country.”
The sisters said their work was shaped by Kara-Newton’s first pregnancy, when undiagnosed pre-eclampsia led to an emergency caesarean section and neonatal intensive care admission for her son.
The founders said they wanted to build technology that could help prevent similar outcomes for other women.
The acquisition comes amid continued concern over maternal health inequalities in the US.
In the US, Black maternal mortality remains alarmingly high, with rates nearly double those of white women, and experts point to unequal access to care, implicit bias and fragmented approaches to care.
A four-week Pilates programme may improve heart, metabolic and stress measures in previously sedentary women, a small study suggests.
Pilates is a mind-body form of exercise that has been linked to better fitness, balance, posture, muscular endurance, mental wellbeing and quality of life in different groups.
Built around breathing, concentration, control, precision, centring and flow, Pilates is already used in physiotherapy, rehabilitation and preventive health. The new study looked at whether a structured four-week programme could affect cardiovascular, metabolic, body and stress-related measures in sedentary adult women.
The longitudinal study included 30 sedentary women split into two age groups, 30 to 40 and 50 to 60.
All participants completed a standardised, supervised Pilates programme lasting four weeks, with three sessions a week lasting 50 to 60 minutes.
Researchers measured resting heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, body mass index, abdominal circumference, fasting blood glucose and serum cortisol at the start and end of the programme.
Systolic and diastolic blood pressure are the top and bottom readings in a blood pressure test. Cortisol is a hormone linked to the body’s stress response.
The four-week Pilates programme was linked to improvements in cardiovascular, metabolic, body and neuroendocrine measures, although not every change reached statistical significance within each age group.
In the younger group, significant reductions were seen in heart rate, blood pressure, body mass index and fasting blood glucose after the intervention.
The reduction in blood pressure after the programme was significantly greater in the older group than in the younger group.
Older participants also showed a greater reduction in glucose and cortisol levels after the intervention than younger participants.
Analysis also found significant links between cardiovascular, metabolic and neuroendocrine changes.
In the younger group, this was particularly seen between heart rate and blood pressure responses.
In the older group, it was particularly seen between changes in body mass index and fasting glucose.
The findings suggest Pilates could be a useful multidimensional exercise approach for cardiometabolic health and stress regulation in previously sedentary women.
The researchers said the larger reduction in blood pressure seen in the older group may reflect a higher cardiometabolic burden at the start, leaving more room for improvement after the programme.
The greater reduction in fasting glucose and cortisol in older participants may similarly suggest that people with higher baseline metabolic and neuroendocrine dysfunction could benefit more from structured exercise such as Pilates.
Although Pilates is known to improve body composition through energy use, neuromuscular activation and support for healthier habits, the researchers said the fall in body mass index over four weeks is unlikely to be explained by Pilates alone.
They noted that participants were also told to avoid alcohol, sugar-containing products and sugar-sweetened drinks during the intervention, which may have contributed to the change.
In the younger group, the link between heart rate and blood pressure suggested coordinated cardiovascular responses after Pilates.
The researchers also found that cortisol appeared to be linked to blood pressure and body mass index, suggesting stress-related changes may be tied to cardiovascular and body regulation after the intervention.
In the older group, the link between body mass index and fasting glucose highlighted the relationship between body fat and metabolic regulation.
A positive link between blood pressure and body mass index in this group also suggested that improvements in vascular regulation may be associated with reductions in body mass.
Overall, the findings suggest Pilates-related physiological changes may involve interconnected cardiovascular, body, metabolic and neuroendocrine mechanisms, with different response patterns by age.
The study has important limits. It did not include a non-exercise control group, so it cannot prove Pilates directly caused the changes.
The sample size was also small, which limits how far the findings can be applied more widely.
The authors also noted that cortisol was measured using a single fasting morning sample, which limits conclusions about broader hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation, the system involved in the body’s stress response.
They said larger studies with longer follow-up will be needed to confirm whether Pilates causes these physiological changes over time.
Article produced in association with Spital Clinic
AMH has become one of the most-requested blood tests in private women’s health. The number it gives back is useful, but only when it is read in context.
AMH testing in the UK has gone mainstream over the past few years. Home-testing kits sell it as a snapshot of “your fertility”.
Private clinics include it in screening packages. On social media, individual AMH results are now routinely treated as a verdict on whether a woman will be able to have children.
That reading isn’t accurate. Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) does carry useful information, but only inside a wider clinical picture.
Looked at on its own, it produces a lot of unnecessary anxiety, and often hides the questions that matter more.
What AMH measures
AMH is a hormone produced by the small follicles in the ovaries, the ones that haven’t yet been recruited for ovulation. Because these follicles are relatively stable across the menstrual cycle, the test can be done on any day, without needing to be timed to a period.
A higher AMH level tends to indicate a larger pool of these follicles. A lower level suggests the pool is smaller. That, broadly, is what the result shows.
The HFEA, the UK’s independent regulator of fertility treatment, describes AMH as an indicator of ovarian reserve, while making clear that fertility test results of this kind “are not guaranteed” as a predictor of fertility outcomes.
Put simply: AMH is a count of what is there. It says nothing about how well the body will use it, and it cannot predict if or when conception will happen.
Where AMH fits in a modern fertility assessment
In current UK private practice, AMH is rarely tested in isolation. A meaningful fertility assessment will pair it with a fuller hormone profile (FSH, LH, oestradiol, prolactin and thyroid function), along with markers such as Day 21 progesterone, vitamin D and rubella immunity where relevant.
This is the structure used in a trying-to-conceive screening, and there is a reason for it: each of these tests answers a different question that AMH on its own cannot.
It is this combination, not the AMH number on its own, that gives a clinician enough information to say anything meaningful about an individual’s reproductive picture.
Misconception 1: “A low AMH means natural pregnancy isn’t possible”
This is the misconception that causes the most distress, and it is consistently wrong.
Several large prospective studies of women in their 30s and 40s trying to conceive naturally have found that women whose biomarkers, including AMH, pointed to a diminished ovarian reserve were no less likely to conceive within twelve cycles than women with reassuring results.
That is why neither UK regulators nor national guidance treat AMH as a test that can predict natural fertility in women who have no known infertility issue.
The reason is simple. Natural conception only requires one good egg, released in a normal cycle, in the right window.
AMH doesn’t measure egg quality, and it doesn’t reveal whether ovulation is happening. A woman with low AMH may still ovulate every month with high-quality eggs.
A woman with high AMH (often the pattern seen in polycystic ovary syndrome) may not be ovulating regularly at all.
The NHS emphasises that age is the strongest single predictor of natural fertility. A 35-year-old with a low AMH and regular cycles is, on average, more likely to conceive naturally than a 40-year-old with a normal AMH and irregular ones.
If AMH comes back low for someone who is trying to conceive, the more useful question isn’t whether pregnancy is still possible (the answer is almost always yes), but whether there is reason to investigate the wider picture now rather than waiting twelve months.
Misconception 2: “A normal AMH means everything is fine”
The opposite assumption is just as risky.
AMH tells you about egg quantity. It does not tell you about:
- Egg quality, which is closely tied to age
- Whether ovulation is happening regularly
- Whether the fallopian tubes are open
- Whether there are structural issues such as fibroids, polyps, ovarian cysts or endometriosis
- Sperm parameters in a male partner
- Whether implantation will succeed
A reassuringly normal AMH at 38 still sits alongside age-related changes in egg quality. A slightly lower-than-average AMH at 28 may carry no real-world implications at all.
That is why no UK clinical body recommends AMH as a routine screening test for healthy women who have no fertility concerns. NICE’s fertility guideline, NG73, treats AMH as one component of a broader investigation, not as a verdict in itself.
Imaging is the natural counterpart to the blood test. A transvaginal pelvic ultrasound directly visualises the small follicles that produce AMH, the antral follicle count. It also picks up structural findings a blood test will never reveal, including ovarian cysts, fibroids, polycystic ovarian morphology, and abnormalities in the uterine cavity. A full ovarian reserve assessment normally includes both.
Where the AMH number actually matters
There are three settings in which AMH carries real, decision-relevant information.
Before IVF or egg freezing. AMH is one of the better predictors of how the ovaries are likely to respond to stimulation medication.
A higher AMH usually predicts more eggs collected per cycle, and a very low AMH may shape decisions about protocol or whether to bank cycles before treatment.
During a fertility investigation. If a couple has been trying for twelve months, or six months if the woman is over 35, AMH becomes part of a wider assessment that should also include ovarian ultrasound, a fuller hormone profile, semen analysis and an assessment of tubal patency.
As context for women planning ahead. Women who want to understand their reproductive options before they are ready to conceive (for example, ahead of a decision about egg freezing) can find AMH informative, provided it is interpreted alongside age, antral follicle count, and other markers, by a clinician who can place the number in context.
Reading the number properly
For anyone who has had an AMH test, three things make the result more useful:
- Pair it with age. A “normal” AMH at 25 means something very different from the same number at 38. Age is doing more work in the equation than the AMH value itself.
- Pair it with imaging. Ultrasound shows what is actually in the ovaries today, rather than relying on a single biochemical marker.
- Read it with a clinician. A number on a screen, with no context, no follow-up and no plan, is the worst way to use a test that, properly interpreted, can be very informative.
AMH is a useful tool. It just isn’t the headline it has often been turned into.
Disclaimer
This article is produced for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Clinical guidance referenced reflects published HFEA, NHS and NICE information available as at May 2026. Individual circumstances vary; readers are advised to consult a qualified healthcare professional before acting on any information in this article. This piece was produced in association with Spital Clinic, which provided background clinical information for editorial purposes. Hyperlinks to external sources are included for reference only and do not represent an endorsement of any product, service or organisation.
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