You know that playing music in the background adds to the ambiance of your retail store. So can you just plug in an AUX cord and call it a day? After all, customers are shopping in store for the products, not a curated playlist.
Unfortunately, that would be a losing approach—both experientially and legally.
Music in retail stores matters more than you think: Hundreds of people signed a Change.org petition to ban Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from retail speakers. According to The Wall Street Journal, shoppers dubbed it “the bane of retail workers and pedestrians.”
If the wrong soundtrack can derail an entire shopping experience, imagine what the right one can do.
Ahead, we’ll walk through how to build a music strategy for your retail store, from choosing the right sound for your brand to staying fully compliant with licensing laws.
If music can spark petitions when it’s done badly, what happens when retailers get it right? A lot, actually.
According to Soundtrack’s latest survey, 95% of retail leaders treat music like a brand ambassador: it’s the only thing in your store that’s always on, always working.
And if you need a more human proof point, scroll through posts on Instagram or TikTok tagged #retailmusic and you’ll see just how many people take notice of the sensory feeling a brand evokes:
We pulled recent interviews of retail experts from leading publications, analyzed social media trends to see what’s working in stores, and developed four steps to create an on-brand music strategy for your retail store.
Each step comes with three key questions to ask yourself. Use them to audit your current experiential retail strategy and build something that reflects who you are as a brand.
What kind of music makes your store feel like your store? Audio branding, sometimes called sonic branding or sonic experience, can shape brand perception.
The right soundtrack reinforces who you are and how you want people to feel the moment they walk in.
In an interview with Forbes, Ola Sars, founder and CEO of Soundtrack, explains that connecting the brand identity to the target customers is key.
“What are their demographics, psychographics, lifestyles, and motivations? These will be the cues that define their favorite type of music, artists, and expectations as they enter the business and associate with your brand.”
Take QSIC, one of Australia’s leading background-music providers for retail, convenience, and quick-service restaurants. “A high-end boutique using sparse, moody tracks can signal exclusivity, while a discount retailer might choose upbeat, familiar hits to create energy and encourage quicker purchases,” says Nikki Wishart, QSIC’s music curator, in an interview with RetailBiz regarding how music strategy has evolved into a genuinely powerful retail tool. “Music works hand-in-hand with visual design and customer service to create an environment people want to spend time in.”
Ask yourself:
These choices depend entirely on your business model. Let’s go through them one by one.
Tempo is all about how fast or slow a song is. Ola from Soundtrack says, “If your store’s bottom line benefits from a higher volume of customers moving through your space and checking out quickly, songs with a faster tempo would be best.”
For example, quick-service restaurants and high-traffic discount retailers often lean toward uptempo music.
Nikki adds, “During peak shopping times, faster tracks in the 110 to 130 beats per minute (BPM) range can heighten energy and keep people moving, while off-peak playlists often drop closer to 90 to 100 BPM to encourage browsing.”
The next step is to select a genre or genres of music that fit your brand and will appeal to your target customers.
Music influences how people feel, yes, but it can even influence what people buy. For example, classical music in a wine shop led customers to buy pricier wines than when Top 40 pop played, according to Melodial’s Retail Music Research Report.
But what if your customer base is diverse?
The beauty of audio zoning is that you don’t have to pick one lane; leading retailers tailor playlists to different store areas or times of day.
Recent analysis from SoundMachine found that moderate volume creates a welcoming environment that encourages longer visits. Music that’s too loud, on the other hand, can create stress for customers and even push them out of the store faster.
Volume also interacts with tempo: a fast, loud playlist turns your store into a get-in, get-out zone; a slower set at a conversational volume turns it into a discovery space.
And one more practical point: consistency matters. Sudden volume spikes—caused by ads, staff playlists, or unbalanced tracks—snap customers out of the experience. If you’re trying to create a branded atmosphere, you want smooth transitions.
Ask yourself:
It’s not enough to create one brand playlist and hit play on it all year. You need seasonal rotations, weekly refreshes, small swaps that keep the energy aligned with campaigns, product drops, or foot-traffic patterns. This might mean mixing anchor tracks with softer ambient music that holds the room without pulling focus.
Melodial’s research reinforces the nuance here: too many highly recognizable songs make shoppers more aware of time passing, while a wall-to-wall set of unfamiliar tracks feels impersonal. The middle ground—thoughtfully familiar meets selectively new—is where most retailers see better engagement.
This is why you want to go for true brand curation rather than outsourcing your playlist to an algorithm.
Ask yourself:
📚Read more:What’s the Best AI Music Generator? Top Picks + Tips
Crowd size in a retail store isn’t constant: it spikes around lunch, again in the late afternoon, and then drops into quieter pockets. And because shopper behavior shifts with crowd levels, your music should too.
This is where it’s helpful to break your day into segments, and plan your playlist accordingly.
According to Nikki, the approach is straightforward: “Early mornings call for calm, familiar sounds to gently wake people up. When crowds pick up, the music ramps up with rhythmic, focused tracks that complement the buzz. Later in the day, as things slow again, the playlist relaxes to help everyone—staff and customers—reset.”
The first step is knowing when your busiest hours actually occur. Use Shopify’s Sales Over Time report to break retail sales down by hour or day. That tells you when your store is most active and when it softens, so you aren’t assigning fast, high-energy music during low-traffic lulls or vice-versa.
Shopify also tracks foot-traffic trends and helps you compare headcount with sales on the same timeline, so you can plan staffing and sound around the real rhythm of your business.
If you want more granular data, you can also integrate tools like Dor: a thermal-sensing people counter that sticks above your entrance.
Ask yourself:
Many retailers assume that if they’re paying for a consumer music service like Spotify or Apple Music, they’re covered to play that music in their store. They’re not.
Even Muzak, the original elevator-music service, required commercial licensing. The idea that “background music is free” has never actually been true.
And failing to understand this has very real consequences. In early 2025, a Connecticut restaurant was named in a federal lawsuit by ASCAP for playing copyrighted songs without the appropriate performance licenses. ASCAP is seeking statutory damages, starting at $750 and up to $30,000, for each song alleged to have been played without a license.
So how can you stay on the right side of music licensing?
In the United States, any music played publicly, whether recorded over speakers, in a playlist, or performed live, qualifies as a “public performance” under copyright law, and businesses generally must obtain licenses from performance rights organizations (PROs) to comply legally.
Those licenses are managed by PROs, which collect royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers. The major US PROs are:
Each one controls different catalogs. That’s why licensing can get messy: you can’t rely on a single PRO to cover all the music you might play. And if a PRO discovers you’re publicly playing songs from their catalog without a license, they can pursue legal action—as we saw in the ASCAP lawsuit against the Connecticut restaurant.
This is the core reason most retailers use business music services. They handle the multi-PRO licensing on your behalf, ensure artists get paid correctly, and eliminate the risk of accidental copyright infringement.
Business music streaming services handle the legal side for you. They secure commercial rights, pay royalties to artists, and provide playlists built specifically for retail environments.
Unlike consumer apps, they cover the public-performance licenses you need and protect you from unexpected compliance checks.
Business music services typically offer:
If you want music that’s legal and easy to manage across one or multiple locations, these are the major providers retailers rely on:
According to Soundtrack’s analysis of MRC data, 54.9% of people say they’ve stayed longer in a business because of the music, and 41% say they would spend more time and money if they liked the soundtrack.
But noticing music and being influenced by it are two different things.
Look for correlations between changes in music and customer behavior or sales performance. More specifically:
Consider running A/B tests: play Playlist A on some days, Playlist B on others, and compare metrics like average transaction value, conversion rate, or time spent in store.
Additionally, gather feedback directly by asking customers for their thoughts on the store soundtrack.
If you use audio zoning (playing different music in fitting rooms, checkout, high-traffic displays), measure the metrics that matter to each zone:
Your employees are on the front lines of your retail operation. They notice when customers linger by certain displays, when the vibe feels right, when someone comments on the music. Make their observations part of your measurement strategy. They can catch things data alone won’t.
Frequently updating your music can provide variety and improve the retail experience for both shoppers and the employees who work in your stores. Some retail stores update streaming playlists daily or weekly. Other stores may only update their playlists monthly or quarterly, but they may use playlists that cover a full day without repeating the same song. You may also want to update your music to match seasonal events, like playing Christmas tunes during the December holiday season.
Your music should not be so loud as to impede conversations in the store, but the ideal volume will vary based on the retail setting. A bookstore may benefit from mellow music played at low volumes, which lets customers peruse books before buying them. A clothing store wishing to project youthful energy may opt for upbeat music at higher volumes.
Retail store music should largely match the tastes of the store’s target market. Classical piano music would be suitable for an upscale fine foods store but would likely be the wrong music choice for a camping store, where acoustic guitar music evocative of campfire singalongs might be a better choice.
Retailers can measure the impact of in-store music through sales data, shopping time, and customer satisfaction. In all cases, you can compare the results with the music played during the time of data collection to see if you can find correlations.
