Part 2 of the perfect music for retail stores:
The music itself

We’ve all had shopping experiences that were enhanced by the right music playing in the store. It seems natural when it happens, but if you are in the store of a savvy retailer who knows who they are as a brand, it’s more than natural, it’s scientific. Music is a huge part of our lives, and supporting your brand’s environment by playing the right music in the right way can have a profound influence on your customers.

A quick note about the depth of this article: The science of the effects of music on consumers is a very deep subject with complexities that you could make a career out of understanding. Since we doubt you have time to study a new career today, we’re going to highlight some key topics and share our quick opinions on solutions. If you’d like to dig deeper please give us a call. We eat this nerdy stuff for lunch.

Setting the stage for the right retail store music, with the right equipment

If you haven’t read part 1 of this series, click here and check it out. It has some very useful info about choosing the right equipment for a great in-store musical experience. In this, part 2, we are digging into the music itself.

What is the right music for a retail store?

It’s tough to summarize all of the science that can go into making the right musical selections in your store, but at a very basic level these two factors will shed light on the right choices:

1. Start by defining what your brand sounds like.
   Good or bad, your retail store tells the story of your own brand. Take a step back from picking songs, and do some strategizing about the story you want your brand to communicate. A store that wants to tell a story that embraces the whole family is probably not going to be the right place for hardcore rap music with n-bombs being dropped every 5 seconds. Think of our store’s brand like its a person with a deep personality. What would that person want to listen to?
2. Don’t pick music you like. Pick music that your key customers like.
   Most of the time the person who runs the store, or picks the music isn’t a carbon copy of the core customer the store wants to embrace. Just like in step one above, take a step back and describe your most important customers. Pick music they want to hear. Don’t be persuaded by the outspoken shop guy who swears that creating a working environment for him is what really matters.

If you select the right music sources, the selections you make and the right amount of variety is way easier than it used to be. Today’s good resources for retail store music will also offer a huge selection of music without offensive language that could very quickly erode all your best intentions.

The legal issues with playing music in your retail store

Most businesses aren’t even aware that they are breaking the law when they play a radio station, Spotify or personal music playlist in the store. To be legit, your business needs to pay for licenses from BMI, the ASCAP, and SESAC for the rights to play music. Even consumer streaming services like Spotify or Pandora are not intended for commercial use. Using one of these services, even when you have the licenses from BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, may put you at risk of breaching that streaming service’s terms of use. We haven’t seen any retailers sent to Siberia for playing iHeart Radio in their store, but to be on the up and up, you need to take some simple steps. The easiest way around the issues these days is to simply choose a music streaming service that IS build for business, and already takes care of the licensing for you.

Picking the perfect music service/source for your retail store

Thank your lucky stars that you have a retail store today and not 1970, when you might have been running to change an 8-Track tape every few minutes;-) Today you have so many options it can make your head spin. And one of the reasons why we so highly recommended the Sonos sound system in our last installment is because their system makes child’s play out of using and mixing streaming services that have perfect tools for you. Here are a few key features that we feel help define a great music service for your store:

• The music selection is vast – so you don’t have to play the same stuff all the time
• Licensing has already been taken care of
• Lyrics and or the song choices have been cleaned up to avoid embarrassing, harmful, offensive interactions with your precious customers
• Music choices and mixes are easy to navigate and don’t require much hand-holding
• Extra features like daypart scheduling, seasonal updates, custom mixes, and even audio commercials add a lot

Here are a couple slam-dunk favorite music services for retail stores

There are a LOT of solutions out there, so experiment if you want to, but based on the criteria above, these are a couple of our favorite services. They both happen to work wonderfully with Sonos. But even if you don’t have Sonos, you can use these extremely easily. We have used both of these services with a lot of success. They both offer great tools that make creating a sophisticated music plan for your brand really easy. They are both very affordable. They both take care of the licensing for you. And they both incorporate great music that will create just the right shopping vibe!

A quick note on the music you’ll find in any business (read “clean”) music source: Its your prerogative to play whatever you like in the store, but when you start listening to playlists that are safe from obscenities you are going to hear new music that you probably haven’t heard before – which can be a great thing. You will also not hear the latest n-word, b-word, d-word, p-word laden jam from the new Drake album that just dropped. If you want to bust out the dirty stuff, you still can, but our guess is that you won’t even miss the risky stuff in your store. Just go listen to it in your car if you need to.

Custom Channels

https://vimeo.com/160796799

Sound Machine

A quick note on a couple services that we tried, but weren’t thrilled with:

• Hotel Radio
  Once you get their system running, it might work great, but we had real problems just trying to get the basics installed and working. I’m not sure what country they are based in, but its clearly not the USA and the process suffers from what feels like a language barrier.
• Soundtrack Business
  Since Spotify doesn’t have a commercial business in the US, we thought that the partner solution they recommend would be a easy fit, but Soundtrack Business suffered – at least in our experience – from similar problems as Hotel Radio. It was tough to get going, there were hitches in the process of getting the account set up and the help offered wasn’t useful at all. “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

How to go the extra mile with in-store music

Any music service you decide to listen to – legal or not – will give you the ability to select a music list and hit play. But in 2018 you have some awesome additional options that can be fun to use and super beneficial for your selling environment.

• Try daypart scheduling.
  Build a playlist of nice calm music to start the day and a more aggressive list that amps up the energy level for the busy part of the day, and then another type of music for the end of the day. Then schedule the mixes to automatically change on schedule every day
• Add a message to your mix
  With Sound Machine you can easily add messages (think commercial) to your music mix. Want to promote an upcoming sale or ride? Want to share useful cycling tips or facts? Build messages and make that playlist your bitch!
• Utilize the professionals and have them build your custom playlists.
  Most business music solutions offer a higher level of service where they essentially become your DJ for the store based on the brand image and other goals. Try it!
• Try new music
  Live it up, baby! You have musical control at your fingertips that they didn’t even imagine in the old sci-fi movies. Go for it. Explore. Change things up. Be daring. We bet you’ll see a great new energy level on the selling floor!

“Just as interior design is part of the in-store experience,
music has become an important competitive tool for business owners.”
– Heartbeats International

Now that you’re inspired to upgrade the sound experience 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“.