By Adam Castleton, CEO of Startle
Are you listening? The age of sonic branding has arrived.
With rising costs, fierce, and increased pressure to maximise every square foot of store space, retailers are looking for innovative ways to improve customer experience and drive revenue.
Unlike visual content, which customers experience one glance at a time, sonic branding is omnidirectional. It fills the room whether or not anyone’s looking anywhere in particular. When it works, its subliminal. When it doesn’t, the issue is often hard to pinpoint.
But it isn’t as simple as playing the top 40 on repeat. At Startle we work with retailers including Schuh, Charles Tyrwhitt and Orlebar Brown to deliver consistent, on-brand background music through centrally managed playlists, expert curation, and reliable infrastructure.
Why using sound makes sense
Since the 90s, leading retailers have treated scent as a controllable brand asset, rotating smells seasonally to cue customers that something has changed or using a single distinctive scent at an entrance to build and reinforce a signature identity.
Abercrombie & Fitch is one of the bolder examples, spending a reported $3 million on scent machines for its flagship stores alone that could be smelled streets away. While Apple (in true Apple fashion) kept their scent marketing minimalist, diffusing a green apple and mint scent through store HVAC systems that was subtle and subconscious.
Today, a different sense is having its moment. Sonic branding isn’t just about background music, it’s engineering an emotional experience that drives commercial impact.
Marketing teams will spend weeks refining tone of voice. They will debate adjectives in a headline, test imagery and layouts – and rightly so. Yet music, which plays for hours at a time in a physical space, is often left to chance, or even worse – staff become the DJs.
The science behind sonic branding
Human behaviour is complex and sometimes surprising. Understanding the science behind how customer behaviour can be influenced by sound moves a store’s atmosphere away from ‘nice music’ and wishful thinking to a powerful sensory trigger that motivates people to visit, stay, and spend, time and time again.
There is a concept in academic research called musical fit. The higher the perceived fit between music and brand, the higher the perceived quality and value. When music aligns with a brand’s identity, customers subconsciously process the environment as more cohesive and considered.
According to research conducted by YouGov, 20% of young adults are more inclined to choose or buy a product from a brand with a sonic identity compared to those without, and 1 in 3 adults feel more positive towards brands with a sonic identity.
When it does not align, friction appears, and customers feel it.
Unmanaged music does not always mean there is no system in place. More often, it means there is no clear structure behind how music is selected, controlled, or delivered across locations. That can show up as playlists that do not reflect the brand, different music styles across sites, no defined ownership at head office level, and limited ability to guide or influence what is played.
Individually, these may seem minor. Together, they create an experience that lacks cohesion. Over time, this weakens brand identity. The tempo, energy, positivity, volume, and genre of music matter too, as well as environmental factors like crowding, time of day and even the weather.
Science shows that listening to fast-tempo background music enhances consumer arousal and increases their variety-seeking and spontaneous behaviour. However, tracks that are too loud and energetic may be inappropriate for your quieter periods in the week. At these times, it may be better to choose a more laid-back soundtrack that fits the trading pattern.
Our own research within the charity retail sector found jazz music delivered the highest average daily sales – significantly higher than pop music. Classical and jazz music also noticeably improved staff mood and created a calmer, more welcoming atmosphere.
The dos and don’ts
Do ensure your music solution is legal.
Do ensure your music solution is legal.You’ll also usually need a public performance license to play music in your business. This will prevent your business from facing fines for unlicensed use, and let you play music across sites without worry.
Bear in mind that consumer music services such as Spotify and Pandora are intended for just that: consumer use. Businesses serious about sonic branding should leave it to the professionals and invest in a B2B background music solution.
- Do consider the type of music that suits your brand (and your customers).
When choosing background music to play in stores, it’s easy to slip into the habit of playing popular music or making assumptions about your audience.
The key here is to know your customer, not as a two-dimensional marketing persona, but as a complex person who responds to their environment in conscious and subconscious ways. An expert musicologist can help curate what your sound should be, built on real-world data, your brand values and commercial goals, and your unique customer base and environments.
This can be continuously improved from feedback and updated with new tracks and artists, to keep things fresh and exciting for customers and staff – after all, it’s the soundtrack to their entire week.
- Do vary your music to reflect different dayparts.
It’s very likely that the atmosphere in your store will be different at 10am on a Tuesday to the afternoon rush on weekends, and your choice of music should reflect this.
Think about the kind of customer behaviour you want to encourage at different times and how your music could assist this, avoiding any discord between the environment during that trading period and your choice of songs.
- Don’t ignore feedback.
Analysing how consumers and staff respond to music in a store can be crucial to improving customer experience. While planning what you’ll play and how it fits into your overall digital strategy in advance is essential, it’s when the music is live that you’ll be able to judge what really works.
Be aware of how your customers and employees react to changes in your soundtrack and look out for changes in behaviour when, for example, you adjust the volume.
You can find more information on background music for retail and how Startle could help you deliver consistent, on-brand in-store experiences here.
