A Phenomenological Examination on Background Music in Retail Spaces

Music is a powerful force that influences the listeners mind, body, and spirit. It achieves this by simultaneously acting at a distance and maintaining immediate contact with the listener’s phenomenal field. The phenomenal field is a section of field theory describing “our subjective reality, the world we are aware of” (Boeree, 1). Essentially describing the physical objects and people in a space in conjunction with our behaviors, thoughts, images, fantasies, feelings.  One philosopher in particular named Alfred Pike undertook extensive research on how music is perceived by a listener in the phenomenological framework. He states that music affects the listener’s phenomenal field by transferring the affective qualities of music to the listener, thus altering the listener’s perceived experience (Pike 249). The affective qualities of music are objective elements of a song that inflict a standard emotion to the listener. This includes a song’s beats per minute, key signature, instrumentation, and other identifiable elements. What can be achieved here, through intentional musical design, is altering people’s behavior within their phenomenal field using the affective qualities of music. Design at this level is common for establishments who want their customers to act a certain way. Utilizing the affective elements in songs is especially beneficial in designing music for spaces that sell an experience such as restaurants, bars, and casinos. Music in this context is described as background music. This music is supplementary to the ambiance in which the listener operates as opposed to foreground music which takes immediate perception of the listener. Similar to other background aesthetic effects like brand colors, background music helps shape a person’s perception of a space by intentionally invoke a feeling or action. For example, Wal-Mart choses blue and yellow as their primary brand color for targeted emotional effects. Blue is a non-invasive color of calmness while yellow sparks cheerfulness and youthfulness. The combinations of these colors shift the customers’ feelings in to actions as they are drawn into the space by the blue and compelled to purchase an item when they see the yellow Rollback tags down the aisles. The same effect can be created with intentionally designed background music.

Business’s focus on background music has risen exponentially as internet technologies shifted how consumers buy their products. Instead of going to the store to get a product they need, consumers prefer the ease of access, cheap shipping rates, and variety provided by online stores such as Amazon. To keep up with this change, brick and mortar stores have prioritized consumer experience in their spaces to make their stores a destination for a defined experience. This gives brick and mortar stores a leg up as this experience cannot be replicated online. Focus on background music and other aesthetics have also been emphasized as a result of competition. In Marketing Aesthetics by Alex Simonson and Bernd Schmitt, they note how “value is easily provided by satisfying customers’ experiential needs – their aesthetic needs” (24). This additional value is important, they argue, because customers now have their basic needs met when they shop by almost every store. To create an experience, stores must focus on the design for all five senses. One of the most important perceptions in this context is consumers’ auditory experience. In a Swedish study from 2017 performed by the Neilson Research Group, Effects of Brand-Fit Music on Consumer Behavior: A Field Experiment, research proves that using brand-fit music versus no music at all increased revenues by 9.1 percent (Sven-Olov 27). In customer surveys, however, the majority of customers reported that they were unaware of the music or the lack thereof, which indicates that their reactions were performed on a subconscious level. This 9.1 percent statistic is overwhelming evidence and should be of great relevance to for brick and mortar stores suffering from the declining amount of foot traffic due to online shopping’s rise in reliability.

To further understand exactly how music effects a customer, we must look at it within the framework of the dual self and self-control. Dual self theory explains “the inconsistency between [a person’s] patient long-term self and myopic short-run self” (“Dual-Self Model”). In this context, if a person is considering buying an item, their short-run self will only think of the immediate benefits of having the item while their long-run self will consider things such as budgets, savings, or other overhanging payments that they might have. Effects of Brand Fit Music considers the dual self when explaining the correlation between background music and consumption by saying “the resulting increased intensity in emotions leads to more impulsivity in decision making” (Effects of Brand Fit Music 5). In this context, the customer’s short-run self takes precedent over their long-run self thus making them more impulsive. Therefore, if emotional intensity increases, it translates into increased consumption. A different explanation hypothesizes that “consumption is induced by positive emotions” which is supported by Bernheim and Rangel (2004). To summarize: music makes people act in certain ways and this power can be utilized by selecting songs which motivate consumers to buy. They motivate through an increasing customer’s emotional intensity and increasing positive emotional experience in a space. Therefore, if a business uses a service that provides careful consideration of aesthetics, proper timing of appropriate music, and music that fits the space, the business benefits with an increase in sales, customer satisfaction, and brand awareness.

Currently, there are many businesses on the market that do exactly that. A team of curators will sit with the marketing director of a business that needs music, talk about the marketing values of the company, the ambiance, the message they’re trying to send to their consumers, their target demographic, even down to the materials the store itself is made of. The curators will use this information in their office and piece together a playlist in accordance with the marketing materials they were provided. The curation company then returns the playlist, or multiple playlists arranged by season, time of day, or other external factors, to the business in hopes that the affective properties of the music will positively influence customer’s brand experience. I challenge this methodology of curation and will introduce 1) a democratized design of the curation process and 2) replace music scheduling with a dynamic selection system which adapts to the store’s ambiance in real-time to afford congruence with the customer’s current experience. Simply put, this system will use song suggestions from local music experts and dynamically select songs according to the ambiance in the store or restaurant. Later in this paper, I will explain how this solution will provide more accurate background music to affect the customer’s immediate experience. This improvement could influence purchasing habits or perceived enjoyment while simultaneously incorporating the aesthetics of the community-- a rare personalization consumers get in this world of online, outsourced, impersonal consumption. In order to discuss my challenge to the current background music curation methodologies, I will examine how it is possible to utilize a listeners’ past objective perceptions to influence listeners’ experiences in the future, the objective affective elements of a song, the aesthetics of music and, finally, its effects on the listener’s phenomenal field.

This paper comes in two parts: first, theory that explains the benefits of a curator network and, second, the dynamic playlist created using the Ambiance Aggregator in conjunction with a curated playlist. To research these topics, I must take a multi-disciplined approach as I must consider theory on musical perception, aesthetics, behavioral economics, and design principals. Because this paper is within the humanities, it will not try to seek discovery of things previously unknown. This paper will not have a formulaic experience. Instead, I will pull theories of phenomenological perception in relation to music, its affective qualities, and apply theory of behavioral economics and design to propose a different method for stores to acquire and play background music.

To discuss this topic, I will use theory from my central text, Esthetics of Music by Carl Dahlhaus, to examine how music takes two forms one when it is being experienced by a listener and the other when it takes an objective form when the listening experience ends. The curator network will use their observations on the objective elements of music to define future experiences for listeners in the store. I will also use supporting texts such as The Phenomenological Approach to Musical Perception by Alfred Pike to study the perceptual and experiential structure of psychological processes and the musical events by virtue of their intrinsic intentionality. These studies will help define the process that a listener goes through when they hear a song. I will also use information from Klaus R. Scherer and Marcel R. Zentner’s research, Emotional Effects of Music: Production Rules to look at the relationship between the structural features of music and human emotions. This information will assist defining what songs to play to create a defined experience for the listener. These two parts and their respective theories will support the benefits of a democratized design curation process coupled with a dynamic selection system.

The improved structure for finding background music for businesses begins with the curator network. This is defined as a team of music experts that reside locally to the business in need of music services. Music experts can be defined as anyone in the community with 1) a strong following on streaming platforms for their curated playlists 2) a large library of songs in which they can identify songs based on their genre, messages, or general aesthetics or 3) people who are musicians themselves. This model of democratized design is one that music companies, like record labels, are already using to find new talent. Internet technologies, as previously discussed, has increased people’s ability to find artists to listen to for themselves. Instead of relying on the music machine churning out refined hits, people now have access to local or underground artists like never before. As a result, record labels have shifted their artist and repertoire (A&R) search from having an in-house scout to analyzing what independent artists people are already listening to. They use this information to then reach out to these artists and ask them to sign on their label in hopes to earn a profit. If record label leaders in this multi-billion-dollar industry are now relying on the general population to find upcoming talent for them, then I believe a similar structure would be successful in defining good music for businesses to play in the background. The curators will be employed to add music from their libraries to businesses in need. This process will work on a web platform where curators in the network can log in and view businesses in need of background music. These businesses will be presented to them according to the curators’ location, expertise, demographics, shopping preferences, etc. From there, the curator will be able to select any business they want, read about the marketing materials for the business (collected from the initial consultation) and begin curating a playlist for that business. They will be compensated based on how many songs they suggest for the playlist and feedback from the end user (business operator.) Now that the outline of the curation network is defined, we must examine how the relationship between the curators and their perceptions on music. This relationship will help define the intricacies at play for how a curator will decide what music to select.

When someone listens to music, their perception takes two forms: one, while its playing and, two, after it ends. Dahlhaus contends that music must be considered as a work of time by referencing Johann Gottfried von Herder’s book Erstes kritisches Wäldchen who said music works “’not merely in but also through temporal sequence by means of an artificial temporal exchange of tones’” (10). As a listener experiences this exchange of tones, “the affective qualities are phenomenally perceived by the listener” (Pike 248). This means that when the song is playing, the affective qualities of the song are transferred to the listener into their phenomenal field thus altering the listener’s immediate perception of their experience. For example, reaching the climax of a buildup in an energetic song would allow a weight lifter the ability to max out their weight as opposed to listening to a soft melodic song. In the context of a shopper considering the dual-self theory, the right song might make them eager to fulfill the desire of their short-term self while ignoring strategic money planning presented by their long-term self. As a curator listens to their music, they encounter the first form of perception, however in order to select songs that define these feelings for future listeners, they must consider their second form of perception, the objective form when the song is completed.

Once a song finishes, the listener can objectively observe the affective qualities the music transferred them. According to Alfred Pike in his work, The Phenomenological Approach to Musical Perception, he explains this phenomenon by saying the music’s “objectivity is displayed not so much immediately as indirectly: not in the moment when it its sounding, but only if a listener, at the end of a movement, reverts to what has passed and recalls it into [a] present experience as a closed whole” (Dahlhaus 11). During this reflective process, the listener gives meaning to the song that has recently entered their phenomenal field. This might seem like this meaning would be purely subjective as the listener provides it; however, phenomenologists argue that the created emotional experience is not entirely up to the listener. Pike explains how we can understand this occurrence by looking at distinction of emotional ownership between the listener and the song itself. Phenomenologists differentiate the affective qualities that the listener phenomenally perceives which directly influence the affective experience that the listener has (Pike 249). As the music plays outside of the listener, it “obtrudes itself” into the listener’s body and mind. Thus, the listener’s “behavior, which imparts meaning to the emotional experience is not completely [theirs]” (Pike 249). This is where it can be argued that an individual song has the ability to invoke similar emotions from different listeners. It is within the “movement of objective musical events” (Pike 249) that determine the movement of affections in the listener. The listener’s reaction is synthesized from the physiological and psychological effects to form a response. This response could range from changing the mood, motivation, perception of well-being, or any other characteristics (Pike 249). This is a very powerful utility that is inherited in the art. Running with the theory that songs have an objective affective qualities which can alter a listeners’ objective experience, then the curators can use their views of the song as a closed whole to determine the experiences of future listeners using the affective qualities.

Now that the supporting theory for peoples’ perspectives of music has been established, we will now look at the how curators will decide what songs to pick. When a curator finds a space within their expertise that they would like to submit songs for, they will then begin to add music based on matching the business’ marketing values and the observable objective affective attributes from the music. They will only be worried with matching their objective experiences to the spaces upon surface level relationships like genre, messaging, and geographic relevance. For example, if a bar-b-que restaurant is opening in Nashville, TN and would like to improve the customers’ experience, the curators for this space would submit music appropriate to a bar-b-que restaurant such as country music with a feel-good message. They would also want to incorporate local artists to the playlist to make the connection to from the restaurant to the customer’s feel more personalized. Music such as techno or something sophisticated like classical music would be left out in this selection. The curators will not have to worry about defining the exact transferrable affective qualities of the music that will define the customers’ exact mood because that will be taken care of in the song selection process. Instead, they will incorporate a range of music that stull matches the target business’ marketing values.

Using the curated playlist of a space, the system will examine a song’s structural features to define its affective qualities with the goal of defining what situations each song will be most suitable to play in. Structural features include qualities such as tempo, loudness, mode, key, or any other feature that creates the song while the affective qualities are how it makes the listener respond. Using this information, the system will create scores that will define what real-world situation each song would be most suitable to play in. After identifying the song’s structural features, it will then reference a large dataset of associated emotions and add scores to the songs called situational scores. Situational scores are integers between 0 and 5 that define what situation to play the songs in by attributing circumstantial data using the previously mentioned big data analysis. Examples of situational scores would be weather condition, temperature, time of day, population in the space, etc. The maximum and minimum of these scores will be dynamic to cater to differences in regions, cities, time zones etc. For example, the maximum and minimum temp 5 and 0 respectively in Austin, TX during the summer will be different than Chicago’s maximum and minimum during February. Alternatively, the curators could do this work if the computer program proves to be inaccurate at determining situational scores based on the affective qualities of songs. However, no matter how the scores are made, the theory behind using these scores stays the same.

I propose a system of analyzing each songs’ affective qualities from their structural features to create the Situational Scores for each song. I will use information from Klaus R. Scherer and Marcel R. Zentner’s research, Emotional Effects of Music: Production Rules to help create these definitions. Scherer and Zentner’s research splits structural features of a song into two parts, segmental features and suprasegmental features (362). Segmental features “consist of the acoustic characteristics of the building blocks of musical structure: individual sounds or tones as produced by the singing voice or specific musical instruments” (362). These features define shifts in an individual tone, interval or chord. These shifts are defined by the acoustical structure comprised by “duration, energy (amplitude), pitch (fundamental frequency), and harmonic structure of the complex wave, as well as the energy and pitch envelopes and microchanges in timbre over the duration of the sound” (362). In order to analyze these segmental features in their relationship to emotion, they must be aggregated to find dominant acoustical structures of the sound sequence. Scherer and Zenter argue that the “segmental effects on emotion inference or induction are expected to be relatively stable and universal, with the exception of random error, over all types of listeners and performance conditions” (363-364). The effects are mediated by “evolutionarily evolved iconic signaling characteristics, based on physiological changes in affect vocalization and [are] relatively independent of individual or cultural differences” (364). Therefore, these segmental features will be very helpful in defining what situation to play songs in. As for suprasegmental features, they “consist of systematic configurational changes in sound and sequences over time, such as intonation and amplitude contours in speech” (364). The comparable features for music are melody, tempo, rhythm, harmony, and other aspects of musical form. Emotional information is encoded in a song’s suprasegmental features through “symbolic coding, as based on a process of historically evolved, sociocultural conventionalization” (364.) We can use these structural features (segmental and suprasegmental) with their relationship to human emotion to define an experience a customer will have in a space.

The relationships between musical structural features and their associated emotions has been thoroughly researched and discussed among musicologists and physiologists. According to The Influence of Musical Structure on Emotional Expression by Gabrielle, A and Stromboli, E some examples of these findings can be seen in the tempo, mode, melody, and rhythm. Looking at mode for example we see that a major tonality produces emotions such as happiness or joy while a minor tonality can introduce sadness within the listener. With this information, businesses might want to stay away from songs with minor tonalities to not make their customers sad or on-edge. In more in-depth structural features like melody, defined as the linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity, complementing harmonies create emotions such as happiness, relaxation, and serenity while clashing harmonies create excitement, anger, and unpleasantness (225). These emotional characteristics will help define situational scores for things like the weather or temperature based on research of external characteristics like weather and their emotional affects.

With the Situational Scores in place, they will then be matched to the scores of the space via the Ambiance Aggregator. The Ambiance Aggregator is part of the program that will determine the Situational Scores for the business in real time and select music to create a dynamic playlist. This playlist will change as the day goes on and the situations change. An example of this part of the service in action would be if it begins to rain one day, the program will then adjust the music to be softer, more melodic and match the “rainy vibe.” As previously mentioned, defining what Situational Scores define a “rainy vibe” will be performed through a big data analysis on what people constitute as a rainy song. Another example of this would be changing to more instrumental music with less lyrics as people enter a restaurant. This would be beneficial because people engaging in conversation at the restaurant won’t be distracted by lyrics when they try to converse. On the opposite side, the song selection might include songs with more lyrics during off lunch hours when people are more likely to be eating alone. In this environment music with lyrics will not hinder as many conversations while still providing proper branded musical experience. As for the emotional side of the argument, the dynamic playlist will shape the customer’s emotional experience by matching or forming their expectations they have for a space. With this service, a business will be able to choose between the two if they would like to match songs to the ambience or precede the ambiance which would create different effects in their store. For example, if a coffee shop owner wanted to play music on a hectic rainy Monday morning, they might opt out of matching the music to the ambiance and precede it instead. Preceding the ambiance would still play music that would match the time, season, temperature and population density of the store, but instead of playing rainy day music, it would play music for a partly cloudy day. This would then introduce music with key emotional elements such as happiness and excitement to create a positive experience for people coming into the coffee shop to escape the melancholy surrounding them outside.

In summary, targeted emotional responses to customers in a store can be achieved through proper data analyzation. The songs themselves must be analyzed by their structural features (segmental and suprasegmental) to quantify the emotions that they will convey. This quantification will be compared to data of emotional responses from situational factors like weather and temperature to produce Situational Scores. With the Situational Scores combined with the Ambiance Aggregator, the program will then be able to create a dynamic playlist on the spot to match the desired mood of the store.

Background music in business design will become even more important in the upcoming years than it is today. As mentioned before, businesses need to stress creating a designed atmosphere to increase customer satisfaction if they wish to compete. E-Commerce is becoming easier, faster, and preferred by the masses which is putting small brick and mortar shops and retailers at risk. Additionally, brick and mortar stores have other expenses like rent in potentially high COL areas that e-commerce stores don’t have to worry about. In order to get over this fundamental challenge, they must set their sights on creating the best experience possible for their customers to entice them to come to their store not only for a material object, but for the experience. As we have seen in the above discussion- music is the best way to reach the emotions of these customers. This focus on customer experience is not just to fight against loss sales from online behemoths- but employ humanistic values of personalization and positive experiences that our society has been straying away from.

The success of this system depends equally on both of its core components: the curator network and the song selection algorithm. As for the curator network, it employs a relatively fresh idea called democratized design which will open up design decisions to a select group in the public for each business space. This idea has been adopted by major record labels who use data from listeners to determine what artists they should sign contracts with.  Not only would this be a move that major players in the music business are already making, but it would improve the quality and diversity of music selection for the business. It would use the diversity of the music selection (still fitting within brand values) to match the diversity of their customers to make a better customer experience. Additional benefits come from increasing the relationship between the business and its customers because the curators are potential customers. I feel that if someone had a say in designing the ambiance of a space in their city, they would be more inclined to go, shop there, and tell friends about it.

The economic benefits of having a stellar customer experience doesn’t stop at making people decide to shop in a particular store over a store online, but to stay once they are already there. Image being in a store that is playing great music from local artists that fits their brand. Not only do you know that a store using this service cares about creating an environment directed toward their immediate community, but you would feel inclined to stay based on the music. This is called customer exposure and is a very important concept in behavioral economics. When people stay in a store longer, it gives the business more opportunities for them to complete a sale. This is the second benefit of the service; not only does it bring people in initially, but it also gets people to stay because they are having a good experience.

The music itself has a multifaceted utility. As previously discussed in the paper, the structural features of the songs itself can drive purchasing habits making a person suspend their rationality to fulfill desires for their immediate selves. This increases sales at a very direct way. The indirect influence comes from what was previously discussed, if music is good enough that a person enjoys their time spent in a store, they will spend more time in the store thus giving the store more opportunities to make a sale. This is where music increases sales in an indirect way.

In addition to the arguments made above, I would also assert that background music is the most influential design aspect that brick and mortar stores could focus on. This is because: 1) sound hits a person’s phenomenal field faster than any other stimulus and 2) the easily identifiable affective qualities music. This is important because, in the business world, you want as few variables as possible when considering improving sales and defining customer experience. Alfred Pike supports this by saying “The significance of the affective states arises from the music and not from [the listener]” (Pike, 249). This means that music is a stable force that businesses can use. Not only is it safe to trust the curator’s selection of music, as previously discussed, but it is safe to trust that the music itself will translate its affective qualities in a stable way. My proposed system uses the subjectivity of initial perception and the objectivity of a musical encounter via a loop from the curators to the shoppers which is thoughtfully explained in the block quote from Pike:

The affective attributes of musical events appear to be objectively presented. Considered as structured feeling the music displays its character as both a subjective and objective thing. It seems to have a sort of self-expression, and the relationship of the sounds with the listener is similar to a personal relationship (249-250).

The curators in the network will pull music from their libraries based on their objective experiences. Like a friend, they know how this music will make people feel. Businesses will then be able to use these recommendations to increase the well-being of their customers with the most powerful force of them all, music.

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