Something that’s come up a lot lately in our chats with businesses in the hospitality industry is the issue of personal streaming services. A lot of people think of them as viable alternatives to proper in-house music solutions. It’s always the same question: “Why do I need curated music? I’ve got Spotify!” A fair point, but a hugely misinformed one.
A little known fact about personal streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer, and all the others like them – they’re illegal to broadcast for commercial use! Spotify itself has a very specific statement in its terms of service to cover itself legally for exactly these scenarios.
Businesses who want to broadcast copyrighted music in Ireland, in 9 out of 10 cases, need both a PPI (Phonographic Performance Ireland) license and an IMRO (Irish Music Rights Organisation) licence to ensure all music licensing is covered and that artists receive compensation for the broadcasting of their work – something very important for the Irish music scene!
Beyond this though, there are some really important reasons why you should ditch streaming services in your business.
Time and Expertise
Let’s get right to the basics. You own a busy bar or restaurant. Orders come in fast. Your floor staff have a lot on their plates. Your managers are busy taking care of the day-to-day workings of your business. The bar staff and chefs are putting together delicious treats for the clientele.
Which one of them has the time or headspace to be thinking about what’s on the sound system?
As competent as your staff may be, they aren’t music professionals. Of course they’re not, you didn’t hire them to be.
Still, every day, in thousands of establishments all over Ireland, hospitality professionals are tasked with sourcing the sound of the business.
What happens when they do this?
More often than not, staff will put on something they like. A playlist they made for themselves maybe. Some more conscientious staff members might build a unique playlist for the business, but these invariably end up being only two hours long and are played to death until staff and customer alike just can’t listen to them anymore. Then staff revert back to playing their personal playlists anyway.
You don’t build a brand like that. You need something that makes a statement about your business – about where your customers are and the atmosphere they can expect there. That requires experience, time, and creative know-how.
A music curation professional knows that you just can’t play the same playlist throughout the day and expect customers to get a unique sense of place and experience.
You need variety. You need to change things up. Businesses and demographics change throughout the day. The breakfast vibe isn’t the same as the night-time vibe. The sound needs to facilitate that!
It’s not unfair to say that busy staff just don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to take proper care of your business’ soundscape. And that’s exactly where streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music can become a real crutch!
No Training Wheels
“I hear you, but my bar manager has excellent taste in music. Surely they can pick the playlist?”.
It’s very possible your staff do have great taste. But that doesn’t mean that streaming services come with the training wheels to make up for the fact that they don’t have the technical knowledge to facilitate a consistent sound – even to an extent that isn’t horribly limited by the basic technology these services operate on.
Let us give you a small example of that. Spotify’s volume normaliser.
In case you’re not familiar, a volume normaliser does exactly what it says on the tin. It evens out the volume between songs so one track isn’t way higher or way lower than another.
Spotify’s volume normaliser (and this holds true for 99% of normalisers on other streaming services too) doesn’t really work all that well. It’s tasked with too hard a job for a simple application to perform.
All songs aren’t created equal. Songs recorded in the 60s tend to have a different level to songs recorded today. Heavy rock tends to be louder than folk or pop.
So when you’ve got a playlist with a wide variety of tracks, you tend to get big bounces in volume after almost every song.
These are exactly the kinds of little details that, if not cared for properly, can drive customers out the door and into the open bar of a competitor.
Consistency is Key
While we’re on the topic of tech limitations, let’s dive a little deeper into the weeds.
We’ve seen a lot of people rely really heavily on the fact that streaming services offer extensive playlist libraries. We’re not questioning the fact that some of these playlists are pretty good. Some are very good! If you’ve got the right aesthetic, they might even come close to suiting your brand as part of a regular rotation. But even then there are huge limitations!
The majority of generic playlists on streaming services are generated randomly and algorithmically. For example, hits of the 70s. The AI knows what tracks people listen to most and puts them together in one mega compilation. What it doesn’t think about is the order tracks come out in.
This ends up in playlists with extremely mixed energy. Bouncing from disco to hard rock, volume to volume, and tempo to tempo.
Things like this can throw a clientele wildly. Going from the Village People’s YMCA to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here makes algorithmic sense when dealing with 70s hits, but when you’re trying to set a mood the pairing comes across incredibly schizophrenic.
That’s an extreme example, but the principle holds true for any song played with a different BPM (beat per minute) count to the track played right before it.
Another major issue with streaming service tech is the crossfade (how songs blend together in the transition from one to another). The software in many streaming service applications tends to blend tracks very little. Sometimes not at all. This can result in playback that has huge gaps between tracks.
Why is this important?
Have you ever been in a busy bar, club, or restaurant, the drinks are flowing and the atmosphere is great, and out of nowhere the music cuts as you turn to your group of friends to say something? Suddenly your private conversation has been broadcast to the entire venue.
There is an Answer
A good music curation solutions partner can help with all of these things.
Without tooting our own horn too much, our proprietary tech, BeatMix DJ, mixes songs live in the moment. Its AI-driven beat (BMP) matching, crossfade, and normaliser were designed by real music experts who know how to blend tracks seamlessly. And each track in the BeatMix library is catalogued (“topped-and-tailed”) to know exactly when it starts and finishes so you get no unsightly gaps in playback.
Aside from being just plain illegal, personal streaming services really aren’t a good match for consumer-facing businesses. They do nothing to contribute to a brand or sense of ambience.
Real music curation, led by music experts, helps build brands and brand loyalty. It creates a sense of unique place in the mind of the consumer. And, really, it puts crowds in a better mood through the consistency of professionally-curated sounds.
It goes without saying that music is a huge driver of ambience and atmosphere. The wrong tunes played at the wrong time can make even the best party grind to a complete halt. The same is true for public-facing businesses!
Poorly-curated soundscapes can turn customers off in a big way. A sudden shift in tone and the whole atmosphere is gone. And when the atmosphere is gone, the crowds tend to follow (with your revenue along with them!).
Luckily, our team at BeatMix are the foremost experts in brand sound curation and are ready to help you build the right sound for your business.