Mastering The Art Of In-Store Music

Today it’s a struggle to find a shop, café or restaurant that does not have some music in the background to make their customers feel at ease, as most business owners have realised that music can have positive effect on their business – what many don’t realise is that it can do a lot more than create a welcoming atmosphere.

We talk to Monta Grinina, Background Music Manager at I Like Music to find out more about what music can do for you, your employees and your business.

‘’We have noticed a worrying trend in the industry where business owners are so enthusiastic to have music in their venues that they neglect the basic rules for choosing the appropriate music for their business’’

She continues, ‘’Music is often chosen by staff who can completely disregard the brand of the business and what their customers would like to hear and an increasing amount of businesses we come across are playing iPod’s or even Spotify which is entirely illegal. ‘’

According to Monta, there are 3 main factors that business owners and managers should consider when introducing music in their venue.

‘’Firstly, music has a long-lasting effect on your brand, so you must spend some time and consider what genre, style or mood do you want associated with your brand. A well-chosen style of music can enhance your brand and lead to an increase in sales. For example, classical music and smooth jazz are perceived to be more sophisticated and luxurious whereas The Top 40 charts and mainstream music predominantly caters to younger people and a mainly female audience.

An insightful study by Charles S. Areni and David Kim highlights this; they played Top40 Chart music and Classical music on different days of the week in a wine shop and on the days when classical music was filling the shop, their sales increased as the customers were inclined to spend more to fit with their sophisticated environment.’’

‘’Secondly, music is a great tool to encourage certain customer behaviours - scheduling your music hourly and each day of the week can make a massive difference. You are unlikely to want to play the same playlist on a Monday lunchtime compared to a Saturday night.

A great example of this is London Underground who have been one of our clients since we began supplying them with their music and scheduling in stations across London in 2005 as part of an initiative to reduce crime.

Within the first year of introducing classical music to London Underground stations, cases of physical and verbal abuse fell by 33%!’’

‘’Lastly, it is vital that businesses only play music from a legitimate source to avoid getting fined thousands of pounds by the recording industry. For instance, music from CDs, Apple or Spotify is only licensed for personal use and explicitly can’t be used for business use.  The PPL & PRS are cracking down on this across all types of businesses.”

“We are lucky enough to work with thousands of clients, every one of which is different.  And we have done extensive research into audio branding and have developed some extremely clever algorithms within our brand new system: I Like Music Manager. We want to encourage business owners and managers to fully utilize the advantages of Music within a retail and hospitality environment.’’

For more information on I Like Music Manager or if you need help with your music needs, please email: instoremusic@ilikemusic.com.

Twitter: @ILikeMusic
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