The importance of the right music in a retail store

We all know how much the right music can add to an experience. Your favorite movie would hardly be recognizable without the right soundtrack. Your dinner party would probably end about 7:15 if you didn’t have the right tunes setting the mood. And your retail store needs the right ambiance if you are going to help your customers emotionally connect with your brand and your products. Music is one of the easiest and most effective ways to set the scene perfectly for buying.

In this two-part blog post, we are going to discuss…
1. Equipment for playing music in the store
2. Music sources and tools for creating the perfect vibe in the store

This topic is vast. One could make a career out of figuring out the right tools and the science behind everything, but if you are like I am…and I know I am… you would like us to cut to the chase and jump straight to some proven solutions. We aren’t going to cover every conceivable option, but we are going to share some simple, inexpensive, proven solutions that you could literally have up and running by tomorrow. So, in the paraphrased words of good old Zig Ziglar, the famous sales coach, “Mr. or Mrs. store owner, if I could show you a very very simple way to make your store dramatically better for your customers and for your sales, when would you say the best time to implement the solution?” Today right? Let’s get going.

Attributes of a great in-store sound system

• Plays music from a number of locations, so that the sound isn’t loud in one spot and quiet in others
• Is easily customizable and variable, so that the mood can very easily adapt to seasons, day parts, event, or moods
• The speakers reproduce sound in a high-quality, wide frequency range, making the music easy to talk over in sales conversations
• Utilizes a multitude of music and audio sources, so no matter what is happening at the store, the sound will support it
• Easy to set up, configure, adjust and control – preferably with simple control from your smartphone or other handy remote
• Easy to move and grow the system, so as your business takes off your sound system isn’t a tiny ball and chain.
• While low price doesn’t have to be an attribute of a great in-store system, we have yet to meet an independent retailer who has too much money.
• The right music mix is vital. We’ll get into that in the next part of this blog series.

Common music equipment solutions for retail stores

Our favorite in-store sound solution: Sonos

There are a lot of competitive wireless systems out there now, so look around and see what features suit your needs best. We can tell you though, if you want a slam dunk solution it’s Sonos. We have used their solutions at home and in a number of stores around the country, and every single time we implement it, the team at the store has loved it.

Key features that make Sonos great:

• Extremely easy to set up. It’s about as hard as falling off a log.
• They make a wide variety of speakers and other products that all work together seamlessly. You can even integrate your old traditional stereo equipment and music sources. The Sonos products are also very handsome and they look professional in any environment.
• The sound is frickin awesome. The more you spend, the better the sound is going to get, but even if you just start with the basics, the sound is great for a store.
• Expanding your system, or reconfiguring is crazy easy. It’s very open-ended, and Sonos is constantly adding services and expanding capabilities.
• Sonos integrates about a million music sources into one slick app that you can control on your phone, tablet or computer. This is spectacular because you can change up your music strategy whenever you want and you can try different music services in seconds. Have accounts with Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Google, and Amazon Prime? No problem. They all play well with Sonos.
• You can play different music from different sources to different speakers very easily. That means that you can create music zones if you want and areas like the service department can play an entirely different thing than the women’s apparel area. It’s very easy to switch back and forth too.
• While you can control it with your phone, when you leave, the music keeps playing, because it’s not playing from the phone. Anyone with a smartphone can control the system if you want them to.
• You can integrate external sources like your TV. So when it’s time for the Tour to play, BAM, it’s one the system!

A small disclaimer: You’ll notice when you research Sonos that they are very “home” oriented. Don’t expect to see the term “store” in their information. Their primary market is simply a home environment. However, our experience with their solutions in the typical bike, running, fly fishing store is 100% success.

In the next in this two-part series, we’ll get into these juicy issues:

• The legal issues with playing music in your store
• Picking the perfect music service/source
• How to go the extra mile and really create the perfect multi-featured music environment

Read Part 2 by clicking this link!

Now that you’re inspired and ready to absolutely kill it with the sound in your store, make sure your lighting is on point too.

Check out the lighting blog post we did here, titled, “The Right Overhead Light For A Retail Store’s Dressing Room“.