Top 5 In-Store Music Mistakes Your Brand Should Avoid

If you’re a business owner or marketer for a consumer-facing business, then you know “the customer experience” has become the new battlefield in which businesses compete. If you haven’t yet discovered the benefits of in-store music, and how it affects shoppers spend and customer experience with brands, then we can help you understand all of it.

This is why businesses who understand the value, perception and persuasiveness of background music, rely on a professional in-store music service provider.  However, many businesses simply either ignore their business mood and atmosphere altogether with no background music, while others make futile attempts of playing using inferior or even homemade solutions. Which besides being illegal and can have you singing the blues in a lawsuit, it also provides for a less than stellar experience for your customers.

If you’re running a consumer-facing business, like a restaurant or retail clothing store, boutique hotel or hair salon, then here’s our top 5 in-store music mistakes you should avoid.

1. Playing your favorite music rather than the customer’s.

Just because you like Beyonce, Taylor Swift or even Metallica for that matter, doesn’t mean that’s the music you should be playing in your business. Every store has a sweet spot in terms of its ideal clientele, the biggest of course being age and gender. Your music should not only support the store’s product premise and meld seamlessly with the physical setting and reflect the overall vibe, but your music needs to appeal to your target audience. Therefore, you need to choose music based on customer demographics. Start by asking yourself:  Who your customer is.  Am I targeting families, or tweens, or someone else? Each one is going to have a much different music preference, so it’s important that your background music reflects that group’s tastes.

2. Using inferior equipment.

Your in-store music is going to set the tone, mood and be a direct reflection of your brand, and thus you need to invest in a quality system.  If you’re playing music from a boom box with cheap speakers, that isn’t going to work. Your brand and image are everything in business, so you want your brand to sound good, not cheap.

3. No control of music or content being played.

If you connect a radio, or consumer device, employees can easily change stations, and since you can’t control what’s being played, you may find your customers listening to music with F-bombs and profanity. When you use a professional in-store business music service provider you have total control of the music and content ensuring that customers get the right music experience.

4. Playing Music Illegally.

Ah, we live in an age where everyone wants to download and play their music for free, but just because you use Pandora at home, doesn’t mean you can at your business.  That’s right, playing music at your business requires the proper performance licensing rights to do so.  So, you gotta pay if you want to play! While you may have missed it, it’s even stated right in the Pandora service agreement: “Due to the terms of our music licenses, the consumer version of the Pandora service (including Pandora One) cannot legally be used to play music in a commercial setting.”

Unless you’re subscribing to a professional in-store music service, then radio stations, Pandora, etc. require you to pay licenses to the the three big publishers – ASCAP, BMI, SESAC. While some business owners knowingly play music illegally, otherwise are very unaware of music copyright laws. They only usually become aware when they get sued by these organizations for unpaid royalties.

Do you own a business and have questions about in-store music design? Has your business ever received a threatening lawsuit from P.R.O.’s like ASCAP, BMI, SEASAC?  Drop us a line below, or hit us up on Facebook and we’d be happy to help.