You've probably had this happen. You walk into a coffee shop or a boutique and everything looks right. The lighting's good, the staff is friendly, and the place has a clear point of view. But something's off, and you can't settle in.
Often, it's the music.
I'm a working musician and I teach music theory, so I'm probably more tuned in to this than most people. But you don't need a trained ear to feel it. Club music on a Saturday morning while you're trying to enjoy a latte? It's an uncanny-valley feeling. You know something's wrong. You just can't say what.
The brand element nobody lists
Read anything about building a brand and you'll get roughly the same checklist. Harvard Business School Online's guide to brand identity is a good example: name, logo, color palette, tagline, packaging, tone and voice, and imagery. Music isn't on it. But it's the one thing your customers hear the entire time they're in your place.
Two questions to start
When someone asks me where to begin with their music, I point them to two questions: Who's my customer? And who am I?
Start with your customer, because different people respond to different things. A Gen Z crowd that loves bubbly pop will react differently than men in their mid-40s. There's overlap, sure, but it's a solid first move.
Then there's you. A minimalist, trendy third-wave coffee shop in a busy downtown is a different world from a southern-chic boutique in a quiet suburb. The right music lives where your customer and your place meet.
What a coffee shop actually needs
Think about why people go to a coffee shop. They stay. They talk, work on something, take their time. So you want music that puts no pressure on them, and three things get you most of the way there:
- A slower tempo. That's the BPM, or how fast the music feels.
- Less going on. Musicians call this textural density: how many things are happening at once.
- Flatter dynamics. Fewer jumps in volume from one section to the next, so nothing pokes out or startles anyone.
Those guardrails work for almost any cafe. Your identity picks the flavor. The trendy, minimalist shop might lean poppier, with a little dance, hip-hop or funk in it. The southern boutique might go for traditional country and bluegrass. Same guardrails, different personality.
Close, but not quite
I walk into stores that are almost there all the time, and it happens a lot in Nashville. A southern boutique will be playing aggressive modern country. Morgan Wallen, say. To my ear, that's closer to hip-hop than to a front porch, and it's way too brash for a shop where you want people to linger.
The mistake usually isn't bad taste. It's a shortcut.
Somebody puts on Spotify's "Hot Country" playlist. The genre is right, but the playlist has no idea what your store is about. The mismatch is subtle, and it matters. (Playing Spotify in a business is its own can of worms. That's a different post.)
What would I play instead? The gentler side of country, Americana and bluegrass. Molly Tuttle, Sierra Ferrell, Megan Moroney and Tyler Childers all have a softer palette: slower tempos, less happening at once, fewer big volume spikes. Even they have louder songs, though, so you'd still pick song by song, not artist by artist.
How right and wrong feel
When the music matches the place, I feel invited into the experience the owner had in mind. If a busy restaurant is playing loud, fast music, I'm ready to take the party somewhere else, and the restaurant gets to turn my table that much faster. If a trendy coffee shop is playing something chill on a slow morning, I'm happy to sit there with my coffee and talk to my wife.
When it's wrong, it's nails on a chalkboard.
Try this
Most owners can describe their customer without much trouble. Stand in your store and look around. What's the age range? What are people doing? Who's actually doing the buying? Then describe your store's look in three words. Keep it simple.
Now listen to what's playing. Do the music and those three words belong in the same room? If not, you've found something to fix, and you didn't need a consultant to find it.
If you try this and want a second set of ears, you know where to find me.