We add songs and they start playing all over the world

December 12, 2017 12:55 AM

Meet The Music Nerds Behind The Tunes You Hear At Starbucks

"We got really fun notes that were like, ‘Hey, the band wants you to know that somebody emailed them because they were in a Starbucks in London and they heard their song.’ Those are great moments for us. It’s like, we’re getting that music out there. And it’s the kind of music that might not necessarily find its way to Top 40 radio anytime soon, but we’re putting it out on our airwaves".

posted by Juso No Thankyou (27 comments total)

Now I'm wondering what playlist Devo's "Beautiful World" was on, because that was definitely not what I was expecting in a Nottingham Starbucks on a cold December morning.

However, it felt quite appropriate.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:05 AM on December 12, 2017

Asda FM Live is the in store radio station for the Asda Walmart main chain stores in the United Kingdom.
posted by thelonius at 4:14 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

At age 18 I spent about 9 months working at a Starbucks, and to this day I think I recognize whenever a song plays that was a “Starbucks song” back then. These would be more on the Top 40 variety (if I still encounter the songs at random)—A few examples: “Kansas City” by Fats Domino, “Brimful of Asha” by Cornershop, and “Chant Down Babylon” by Bob Marley come to mind. Outside of work I was exploring my city’s punk scene (and trying to pass my classes). But for forty hours a week I donned a green apron and begrudgingly hummed along to cool Bob Dylan songs and the like.
posted by little_dog_laughing at 4:14 AM on December 12, 2017

A whole article about Starbucks music and not one mention of Norah Jones, Diana Krall, or Tony Bennett duets.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:20 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's a Starbucks compilation I've had in in my holiday rotation for a lot of years now: Lifted : Songs of the Spirit.

These people really are influential - not only in surfacing new artists, but also in bringing forward older tracks and artists that never hit the mainstream.
posted by Miko at 6:25 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

The video linked at the end of the article really is good.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's a Starbucks compilation I've had in in my holiday rotation for a lot of years now: Lifted : Songs of the Spirit.

Hey! We have that one, too!

Speaking of corporate playlists...Does Pottery Barn still put out CDs of their holiday music mixes? We have a couple of them from years back, and they're actually pretty damned good.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:47 AM on December 12, 2017

Now I'm wondering what playlist Devo's "Beautiful World" was on, because that was definitely not what I was expecting in a Nottingham Starbucks on a cold December morning.

Over the last 15 years or so, I've heard "Beautiful World" and other Devo songs being used in some really weird advertising contexts, most notably in a TV campaign for the US Target stores that emphasized the aspirational-lifestyle qualities of the brand. I've never been clear on whether the people responsible for the ads had really listened to any of the songs. But I still count it as a win for Devo as a multi-decade protest art piece, in terms of sneaking subversive messages into consumerist propaganda.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:15 AM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

At age 18 I spent about 9 months working at a Starbucks, and to this day I think I recognize whenever a song plays that was a “Starbucks song” back then.

I worked at a Caribou. I think their corporate-approved playlist was about six hours long max, and it very rarely changed. It was a lot of the type of vaguely-alterna-interesting music that was impossible to tune out, too. After a couple of months, we all threatened to riot if our manager didn't blatantly break store policy and let us play our own music, because we were all going slowly insane.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:19 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've always found it interesting that stores and restaurants have much more adventurous curated playlists than the actual radio.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:21 AM on December 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

I worked at a Subway for a few months in the mid-90s, and the best song I remember hearing was “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. Up here in Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart almost always sticks to pretty bland fare, but a couple of years ago I heard “Mule Skinner Blues” by The Fendermen in one, which was a very pleasant surprise.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:28 AM on December 12, 2017

I've never been clear on whether the people responsible for the ads had really listened to any of the songs.

Of course they listened to the songs, but the majority of the people in the world have not, and the snippet is fine for them and those responsible get a song they like on TV (money for their favorite artists and a joke for those who get it). That particular Target campaign also had "Age of Consent" by New Order, also not really a happy shopping song but the intro guitar works fine in an advertisement.

As a sort of corollary to this, Rhett Miller of the Old 97s had a recent article published where Google mostly copied one of his songs "Question", had it played by a cover artist and added a tiny flourish, so he got no money or credit for the ad. Curating is sort of the opposite of muzak or theft.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2017

Not mentioned, but I feel like it was Putamayo clothing stores that started doing this. Went to look for a link, and apparently they're a music label now.
posted by Mchelly at 7:43 AM on December 12, 2017

Here in Chile, in supermarkets and such you sometimes hear Miranda Lambert or Kacey Musgraves, neither of whom have ever been played in any other form of radio or public broadcasting of any kind in Chile, so I'm thinking there's a deep cover Country Music fan working at the commercial music company.
posted by signal at 7:47 AM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I worked in clothing retail in the early 2000s and every month we'd get a CD. The CD player was super special and no one was to touch it. I do recall one late night where we were changing the window displays that someone put a different CD in and it felt shocking.

But all the songs from those CDs are permanently burned into my head as J. Crew music.

And it was not uncommon for people to ask what the song was, so we had a little list next to the CD player.
posted by k8t at 9:06 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

A story manager where I once worked practically ruined Patsy Cline for me. Retail: not even once.
posted by thelonius at 9:54 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I work in a big box retail chain every weekend. The song selection is terrible and on a 1.5 hour repeat. If I hear one more singer in search of the note while repeating the same lyrics over and over and over.....arrrgh! I'm going to find a way to disable the G.D. speakers.

I go into several other stores; grocery, dollar store, what-have-you and the exact same playlist is there, haunting me; I sometimes have to leave the stores without buying anything because I just cannot stand it any longer.... playlists are one of the things I 100% abhor about retail.

I spend the rest of the week trying to get rid of earworms until the next weekend rolls around and the damn things are back; whimper. I just could NOT take it every day.

Why the heck do we even need muzak? Is quiet or normal ambient noise that over-rated?
posted by mightshould at 10:07 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Why the heck do we even need muzak? Is quiet or normal ambient noise that over-rated?

All the workplace concerns I see discussed, and yet I almost never hear anything about the detrimental mental health effects of banal programmed music stuck on infinite repeat. Oh, how I would love to see this cultural monstrosity torn down!
posted by philip-random at 10:21 AM on December 12, 2017

I worked in a small, family-run supermarket in the mid-to-late 90s during high school and college. We had two stations we could choose from when I was there, which we (or *I*, anyway) referred to as the Oldies station and the Phil Collins station. Oldies was awesome -- they played all the stuff you hear on an oldies radio station, Motown, early Beatles, etc., but had a really wackadoo mix of other stuff that I rarely if ever hear elsewhere: Backfield in Motion by Mel & Tim, Winchester Cathedral by The New Vaudeville Band, Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers. I'll hear some of the deeper cuts here and there a few times a year, and my husband never knows them even to me they feel like Oldies standards. I always think of that kind of music as Grocery Rock.
posted by jabes at 10:41 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is very little that's accidental about retail environments. I'm sure they've found that playing music makes people stay longer and buy more.
posted by thelonius at 11:00 AM on December 12, 2017

The most inappropriate retail music I've experienced was at Aritzia, where one day they were playing Kanye's Blood on the Leaves, which very, very clearly samples Strange Fruit.
posted by airmail at 1:55 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm sure they've found that playing music makes people stay longer and buy more.

Target recently added background music; "'It's almost like DJ-ing the world's largest wedding reception,' said Danny Turner, global senior vice president of programming and production for Mood Media, which supplies background music for Target and a lot of other companies."
posted by mr. digits at 2:04 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I feel for retail workers, Full-on Seasonal Music in retail spaces started weeks ago here.

Last week in the supermarket, mixed in with the jolly icy fluff, I perceived a desperate demented manic deconstruction of Jingle Bells (?). I think it was Judy Garland.
posted by ovvl at 3:18 PM on December 12, 2017

Starbucks is always where I feel validated for my obscure music choices; I regularly point out to my friends that this song they've never heard is quite good and Starbucks knows it.
posted by numaner at 3:32 PM on December 12, 2017

I’m trying to remember the last time I went to a regular Starbucks (as opposed to one of our eight majillion campus ones, a Target one, or an airport one). It’s...been awhile. There’s not really a lot of time to notice playlists at these locations, so I kind of miss it now that the article points these people out.

On the other hand, I worked at Legoland back in the early 2000s and we had a truly awful playlist. Smash Mouth’s All Star and Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi played a prominent role—especially given how short the playlist was. To this day, I can’t stand either one to be played.
posted by librarylis at 4:32 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I worked at a restaraunt that played Spandau Ballet - True, like once an hour. ah hah hah hah AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
posted by WeekendJen at 10:27 AM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've never been clear on whether the people responsible for the ads had really listened to any of the songs.

The most extreme version of this I've encountered was slightly different—it was a training video for staff at Sainsbury's (a UK supermarket), in 2007.

They wanted us to remember to smile at customers, so one of the videos we watched had a little montage of Sainsbury's workers in all the different uniform, smiling at the camera, cut to the chorus of Smile by the Supernaturals:

You'd better smile! Smile! Smile! Smile! Smilie! ...

The video cut off just before the final lines:

'Cause that's! all! that you've got left,
Your life's a mess, you been cut adrift

That song had been an inescapable hit ten years before. I can't believe they didn't expect us all to complete the lyrics in our heads.
posted by daisyk at 5:25 AM on December 14, 2017