While everyone knows that music adds to the shopping or dining experience, they may not know how much real consideration needs to go into what music is played and what rules must be followed. In store music is meant enhance and improve the ambiance of the shop, but it must be done properly. Instead of relying on the radio or your personal iPod to provide in store background music, your much better bet is to use a dedicated service that can provide you with this and other important related services as well.
Possible Copyright Infringement and Other Rules to Keep in Mind
If you think that you can just set your radio to a favourite station or push “shuffle” on your personal iPod and provide lovely music to shop by without any kind of legal considerations, you might be in for a rude awakening. There are a number of agencies that set the rules for when music can be played, what music is allowed and who can play it. Music for shops is strictly regulated by those agencies. There are several license types that you would have to choose from, simply to play the radio during store hours because it is a commercial venue, making your music a performance. Which license you would need would depend on the type of shop that you have, of course, with some establishments falling in the gray area between two types, requiring the need to have both on hand. When calculating such fees they are also take into account the floor space of the intended broadcast area.
Radio and iPod: The Lack of Control for Instore Music Can Hurt Your Business
Think about a time when you were shopping in a mall. In one store, the playful, fun music made you nearly dance down the aisles, picking and choosing items and having a very good time. You lingered because you liked the music so much. In a more upscale store, the in store background music was softer, slower and classier, making you feel more refined and discerning. Then you walk into a third store where the music is either too loud, not loud enough to be heard or is all wrong. It is so jarring that you leave and you would not be alone. A survey found that nearly half of consumers will leave a store because they were so put off by the choice of in store music. If you were losing as much as half your potential business, wouldn’t you do everything that you could to keep those people from walking out the door?
A radio station plays a certain type of music, of course, but that does not mean they are playing the right type consistently. There are other issues like static or other stations bleeding through to contend with. And, there is the fear that the station will cut away for their commercials only to feature an advertisement for your rival. That’s all that you need – having your competitor’s sale advertised in your own store!
The right system will consider the type of shop, the type of customers and the atmosphere that you want to convey. You want shoppers to linger and to enjoy themselves while they are milling about your shop, hopefully falling in love with your items and spending lots of money.
The Right Music System Can Save You Time and Frustration
Setting up music for shops can be as simple as hiring a service and letting them handle the details. They can set up a hard drive media player that plays all of the music for your shop as well as the overhead announcements which can come as sales announcements or other messages. Once the system is set up, it can be updated via the internet so that there is no need for dedicated staffing to make any changes or updates manually. That frees your staff from having to mess with music during the working hours and keeps you from having to pay for overtime as well.
Music can be changed for the seasons and the holidays. Special music or announcements can be added into the rotation as you desire. You can make great use of marketing research which may show which songs or types of music are the best received by your average shopper.
Once you develop a working relationship with this service, you can determine how often music changes or even schedule certain types of music to be played on certain days of the week. Think of how fun it is to have peppy, upbeat music on Fridays afternoons while you might want softer, slower music for Sundays. If there are problems, you call or email the in store music provider for service. All of these services keep you from having to deal with licensing concerns and managing your music content in your store, keeping you and your customers much happier.
