Altaura: Music Consultancy for Hospitality

Altaura began with a DJ who kept noticing the same thing. Doug Marshall spent a decade on the decks and on brand work, playing sets for Warner Music and Armani and building sonic identities for hotels, restaurants and retail groups. The music was rarely the problem. What was missing was a plan for it.

He founded Altaura in London in 2020 to supply that plan, with Max von Zeffman as co-founder. Max came from marketing and advertising for Disney and Bentley and from work with BBC R&D, and he gave the studio its second discipline: behavioural insight, set beside the musical ear.

Gaby Morse, who ran events across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, looks after clients and partnerships. Lucy Cook, head of music, is a curator and DJ with a background in A&R who has played Glastonbury and the Tate Modern. Pete Rutherford has spent two decades designing audio systems, from national retail roll-outs to single boutiques.

In a nutshell, Altaura designs how a space sounds. It writes a music strategy for the brand and each part of the day, curates from its own licensed catalogue (the Soundaura, refreshed every month), tunes the sound system and the acoustics, and books DJs and live musicians where a moment calls for one. Altaura calls this atmosphere alchemy. In practice it is measured in how long guests stay, what they spend and what they say about the room afterwards.

Today the studio works from Fitzrovia in London and from Santa Monica, for hotels, restaurants and bars, shops, workplaces and wellness spaces.