Susan Dickenson

In-Store Music: Profiting from the perfect music mix (Part 1)

When you’re in the business of selling a lifestyle, music can play a big role in developing a brand, creating a mood and attracting certain customers. Paul Thompson, VP of merchandising for OneCoast, begins his retailer merchandising seminars with the topic, stressing the importance of the music mix. “It’s like picking a color – there are different tones and beats that work better at different times of the day, and different levels and variations that will appeal to different customers.” 

Tammy Myers, marketing manager for OneCoast Southwest, said the mix is just as important in showrooms. “We changed to satellite radio for the last (Dallas) market and got really good feedback. Before that we had a service that sent mixed CDs… and way before that, it was Charles Kennedy (former owner of Kennedy Group, the company that was bought out by and later evolved into OneCoast) playing CDs on a huge changer, with everything selected according to the time of day.”

Now that our music collections have shrunk from a wall of LPs to a shelf of CDs to a pocket of iTunes, setting a musical mood is as easy as plugging the iPod into the store stereo system… right? Wrong. If you haven’t paid ASCAP, BMI or SESAC for permission to play that funky music in your public place of business, you risk sanctions under U.S. copyright laws that could include statutory damages of up to $30,000 per song.

Or you could play it safe with a satellite, broadband or subscription service from a company such as DMX, Sirius or Muzak that has not only already paid the licensing fees for you, but they’ve also put a lot of years, technology and science into customizing just the right mix for the right audience.

Leanne Flask, VP of Audio Content for DMX, stresses the right mix isn’t about creating a playlist, but about creating an entire program – an environment and an experience. Flask oversees a team of 15 music designers who use an extensive set of criteria to establish a store’s “music DNA,” the foundation DMX uses for understanding and designing a program. “We have our own set of demographic interpretations, but there are so many levels that go into determining the store’s touch points and developing the DNA,” she said.

It begins with a series of questions. “We start by asking what it is they’re trying to do: extend their brand? Create a brand experience? Or cater solely to their customers?” Flask said. “We have conversations about what they’re selling, look at how the store is designed -- is there a lot of concrete, is it warmed by carpet or thick drapes? Is it about offering comfort, or turning tables?”

Flask, who studied music performance and education in college, added when it comes to designing a music program, it takes skill and talent to separate personal taste from what fits a particular environment.

Over at Muzak, music designers are referred to as audio architects. One of DMX’s biggest competitors, today’s Muzak operates very differently from the Muzak that began in the 1940s with a practice called Stimulus Progression, a subliminal arrangement of music according to workers’ energy levels over fifteen-minute segments. At one time, Muzak claimed it could enhance productivity and offset decreases in worker efficiency throughout the day by varying the tempo and tones of remixed musical renditions that were meant to be heard, but not listened to. Those spiritless instrumentals of yesteryear’s Muzak, however, have been replaced with carefully edited playgroups of original recordings.

More and more stores are finding added value in selling their in-store music as CD collections so customers can, in Flask’s words, “take the brand home with them.”  And why not – if you’re a member of the lifestyle demographic to whom the mix is designed to appeal, chances are the music on sale by the cash register is the perfect accompaniment for the dinner party at which you’ll break out that just-purchased set of wine goblets, dinner candles and guest towels.

Josh Kaner of HIPster Music caters to the retailer-as-music-vendor concept by offering an entry point for any size store, in any quantity. Noting that most original CD recordings require a minimum order that would run in the thousands, his company will edit a mix and wholesale it to the retailer for much less so that even the smaller independents can get in on the action.

“If your target market is female, age 30-50,” Kaner explained, “We’ll source a custom mix of existing CDs, maybe something from the 40s, a little French jazz, some cocktail tunes, some new electronica, and deliver a set of CDs so the store can enhance its atmosphere and profit from the sales. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved, including the writers/publishers, and it’s exciting for retailers not necessarily versed in selling music to have a great, eclectic mix of CDs they can introduce to their clientele.”

Posted by Susan Dickenson on March 6, 2007 | Comments (5)