Music is an important element for drawing in customers to your cafe. Research indicates that people who have had a satisfying experience while dining out at your establishment are likely to come back more often and spend more money.
It’s not enough to stream from a personal account. You must legally acquire the proper licenses for commercial use.
Music Makes Queues Feel Less Stressful
The right music can keep customers happy while they wait for their orders. Using soothing instrumental music that doesn’t have lyrics helps customers feel calm and relaxed, making them more likely to stick around longer and spend more money on food and drinks.
The musical choice is especially important for cafes because it builds the atmosphere and brand. When people go to a restaurant, they expect to be able to escape from their daily stresses and have a pleasant experience.
Studies have shown that listening to music can lower stress levels by triggering the release of positive hormones. These hormones can help people make more considered decisions in stressful situations, as they block out any negative emotions and encourage a ‘cool’ head.
It’s also been found that if the music is slow, people queuing will have a higher tolerance of waiting than when fast-tempo music is playing. This is because slower music helps people focus on their thoughts and makes time pass faster.
When choosing a music service for your cafe, choose one that offers songs licensed for commercial use. This means that your songs won’t be interrupted by commercials or chatter from other listeners – which can distract from the customer experience and even conflict with your brand.
Music Boosts Loyalty
As much as service, food and coffee are important for a cafe, music plays a huge role in how customers feel about your place. Playing a playlist that matches your brand and the ambiance you want to create could encourage customers to return to your cafe.
If you aren’t sure what music to choose, try playing some different genres and track how it affects your sales. Fast-paced music makes people move through the cafe quicker, while slow-paced music may encourage them to linger and browse. You can use a B2B music service for cafes that covers performance and licensing fees in one affordable monthly or yearly subscription payment, allowing you to focus on customer experience and profit.
In addition to encouraging customers to visit, music can inspire them to tell their friends about your business. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools for restaurants, and it can increase your customer base significantly.
Successful musicians understand the importance of establishing an authentic brand and creating connections with their fans, and they often take active steps to do so. By engaging with their followers and fostering a community, they can build loyalty that lasts years.
Music Creates a Private Space
A cafe’s music selection is as important as its menu and decor. The right music can help set the mood and encourage customers to spend more money. Using the best music for a cafe can energize staff during busier periods and create a warm, inviting environment for slower ones.
Similarly, the acoustic guitar music popular in many coffee shops helps provide a relaxing atmosphere for customers. Whether customers study or meet up with friends, they’re more likely to focus on their work and conversations without interruption when listening to music.
Another way in which cafes use music is to promote the social aspects of their business. As anthropologists have shown, music listening is a powerful tool for socialization, with particular potential to bolster relationships and affirm what people have in common.
Music’s mediatized consumption also increases the number of spaces and activities colonized by musical experience, including the bedroom, office, car, mall, bank queue, train, jogging, walking, eating, etc. These experiences are enriched by the new aesthetic modalities facilitated by today’s ramifying sonic-social-technological assemblages.
Moreover, how music is listened to and consumed has profound implications for commercial use. For example, when people stream music through a personal Spotify account in their home or workplace, they generate mechanical royalties for the artists and producers who created the music. Those tracks would generate performance royalties for the same artists and producers when streamed in a commercial setting.
Music Boosts Customer Engagement
Music is a powerful tool to boost customer engagement and can make or break the experience for shoppers. By incorporating it into your brand strategy, you can create an emotional connection with customers that can impact their memories, affect their heartbeat rhythm and even shape how they perceive your business environment.
Three aspects of music have been shown to influence consumer behavior: genre, tempo and volume. Using these elements to craft the right playlist for your cafe can encourage positive experiences for your visitors and boost your sales.
For example, playing upbeat music during your queues can energize and excite customers about their food while waiting. A slow tempo like classical music can also inspire people to spend more in your cafe as it’s often associated with luxury and sophistication.
A playlist curated to suit your audience and target market will help your brand build customer loyalty and increase the number of unique visits to your site. However, you must be aware that music streaming services (like Apple Music or Spotify) provide a private license for personal use only and playing them in a public space is illegal.
A dedicated music service that provides licensed content for businesses like restaurants is the best option for your cafe. It’s far preferable to non-subscription Pandora or the radio, which often feature commercials and chatter that aren’t aligned with your brand.
