A Backlash Against Piped Music | Hacker News Reader

A Backlash Against Piped Music

citylab.com

61 pointsevolve2k56 comments

TLDR; article is about new organization called PipedDown trying to convince stores to turn off background music citing bad health effect on employees due to continuous forced upon music.

I myself have wondered how employees of some restaurants and shops survive this day after day. However, marketers have long used music to influence customer behavior:

- Effects of Background Music on Consumer's Behavior: A Field Experiment in a Open-Air Market (2007) http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/EJSR2007.pdf

- The Influence of Background Music on Shopping Behavior: Classical Versus Top-Forty Music in a Wine Store (1993) http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings...

- Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers (1982) http://freakonomics.com/media/Using%20Background%20Music%20t... %20of%20Supermarket%20Shoppers.pdf

- The Power of In-store Music and its Influence on International Retail Brands and Shopper Behaviour: A Multi-Case Study Approach (2002) http://www.semus.lt/medziaga/1.pdf

Grr..."TLDR;". Please if you're going to insist on doing this then at least summarise the facts of the article accurately. Pipedown isn't a new organisation, it was founded in 1992 in the UK[0]. What the article mentions is the establishment of the first US Chapter of Pipedown.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipedown_(campaign)

I find music in stores to be always really annoying, not just during xmas holidays; as a prog rock fan myself just about everything they play hurts my ears and surely doesn't make me want to stay more in the shop beyond the strict necessary. If they can't or don't want to play prog rock that's fine to me, I understand it's not the best kind of music in that context, a gentle soft jazz background would be wonderful to me too, but please don't hurt our ears with the latest top chart rubbish. No matter if a lot of people normally likes it because that's probably not the case after listening to it a dozen times; I personally would hate to hear even my favorite bands played in a loop every day, so please be respectful and creative.

About that pic of a woman measuring sound pressure using an app, that's fine for non professional comparative measurements using the same phone (this place is louder than that place), but don't expect to get any accuracy from that unless it can be connected (and calibrated - very important) to an external higher quality mic with no software or hardware compression, otherwise 10 phones using the same app to measure the same sound will give 10 different results, all of them possibly wrong.

I have a slight hearing deficit caused mainly (but not exclusively) by attending loud prog rock gigs in my younger years :)

Whenever there's background music playing in a pub or cafe and the background chatter gets above a certain level I can't actually make out what anyone's saying. It's a huge annoyance, but also self inflicted (the last gig I attended was Mogwai in Edinburgh a few years back, I'm not sure my hearing ever recovered).

My other pet peeve is seeing TV's popping up everywhere, which can often be a real conversation killer when your group of pals are glued to re-runs of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

I ran into WholeFoods for the holidays to grab a couple of spices... and got Rick Rolled!

Seriously, as I'm checking out I hear that "Never gonna give you up; Never gonna let you down"... turn to the checkout and mention I didn't think I'd ever accidentally hear that Rick Astor song again. She noticed and was horrified, yelled over to the Customer Service desk next to us pointed up and mouthed WTF! That person's eyes got wide... and I walked out the door.

> I didn't think I'd ever accidentally hear that Rick Astor song again.

It’s Rick Astley

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You're right! Blocking it from memory... again.

I hear this song all the time. It's not like it's banned. If you go out and ask a human on the street what "Rickrolling" is, most won't know what you're talking about.

> jazz background

Jazz physically gives me headaches. I don't mind the music, but after a short while I tend to get a headache, even if I didn't notice it and it was playing in the background.

Let's just stick to the goal being silence, ok?

I live in America, and the insistence on playing music at every location has long bothered me. It tends to never be music that I care much about, and the volume often makes it difficult to hear other people when you're in larger groups. I don't mind music at clubs, but consistently playing music at bars, for example, makes it difficult to go to bars and have a conversation with friends.

I've heard a number of justifications for the existence of the music, but I don't often find any counter-examples (places without music) here in the US.

I'm half Finnish, and travel to Helsinki relatively often, and if you want to see what its like to not have music constantly playing, go there. It's incredibly refreshing to be able to go to a bar or a restaurant and not have music playing (if its not a music specific venue). My wife, who is not Finnish at all, noticed it immediately as well, and thought it was great. I really wish some places in the US would actively encourage a quieter environment.

I'd say in general Europe has better tastefulness when it comes to music in public spaces, both in choosing the right time/place for music and also choosing the right genre of music for the occasion.

I remember the first time I boarded a Norwegian flight hearing the music and thinking "Wow, an airline of all businesses can find some decent tunes".

Gas station “television” must cease to be a thing.

Gas station TV is somehow worse. You're forced to stand in that spot so they blast that spot with ads, entertainment "news", and other garbage that I didn't ask for and usually with no easy way mute or decline (do pumps usually have a mute button that I'm just not seeing?)

I'm just here for the dinosaur juice yall

On at least some gas pumps, pushing the button on the upper right will mute the sound (the video still plays). I just heard about this a few weeks ago, and tried it at a Chevron station near my house. I can confirm that it works!

I remember the first iteration of these pumps that I saw did have a mute bottom. Unsurprisingly, on an otherwise pristine pump, the mute button tended to to be severely worn presumably from frequency of use and/or forceful pressing. The station never took a hint, and the screens still blare their ads only with broken mute buttons.

After my last driving trip to the states i resolved to always carry a roll of duct tape in the car. The speaker holes are small and mute considerably while covered. It’s a small contribution we can all make to a better world.

This is a thing?! Thankfully it has not yet reached the UK.

...ewwwwww.

It'll get there. It's not like you're above it. Probably won't happen on the continent, though.

Yeah, indeed. My 'ew' was more an instinctual and physical shudder at the as-yet-unimagined horrors in my future than a value judgement.

I can think of two gas stations nearby with that. I've started avoiding them since they installed the screens.

I went to one where it was broken and just repeated something like "Welcome to Gas Station TV! Follow us on facebook, twitter, instagram" on loop. JFC.

Ubiquitous music bothers me, too. I tend to work in coffeeshops just to get out of the house, and I'm not aware of a single one without music. I never enjoy the music. I just endure it, or I defend myself with louder music of my own choosing in my earbuds. It's definitely stealing some fraction of my mental power. I worry that it's an indication that many people find silence uncomfortable, that they get anxious without some kind of distraction. Sometimes I wonder if it's like the smoke beekeepers use with bees.

I think the employees often like it, too. It also helps make conversations a bit more discreet, I think?

Indeed. In a coffee shop, one has two priorities when talking to another person:

- Being heard by the other person easily enough

- Not being heard by anyone else.

The second one is important so that you don't need to put as much effort into self censoring or rapidly adjusting volume when saying something especially private. In a silent coffee shop, there is no volume low enough such that other people can't hear you. Lack of privacy is obviously not a deal breaker but obviously neither is piped music for a lot of people.

The best coffee shop I've been to was a series of small rooms without doors with about four tables in each room. Often you would be the only group in the room especially if you were a big group. Even if you weren't, the walls absorbed a lot of noise. It was nice.

I'd personally suggest some low white noise for this purpose. Used all the time in offices already.

Employees like it if and only if they can control it. Having music forced on you for a 10 hour shift is hellish.

The place it annoys me is airports. Some have music, some have TVs playing news and ads.

But virtually everyone there has a smartphone and headphones--if we wanted to hear audio, we'd play our own.

I like having a shared experience with people around me.

Taken further, some people might want different "audio zones" in their vehicles[1].

I mean, sure, you could, but is sometimes having to compromise really so bad?

It feels like nowadays everything is about unique content tailored to our individual tastes, without compromise, and that we should each be sheltered from any experiences we might dislike. Or not be "engaged" by.

[1] https://m.phys.org/news/2013-05-speaker-cars-audio-zones-fro...

My problem with piped music is not that it's not personalised... just that 99% of the time it's complete trash, it's so bad I actually find it offensive. I'm hardly a consumer so it doesn't affect me much but there are still other places you have to be where you can't escape it. Every time I go to the barber I get subjected the latest pop trash, it's so crap it sometimes makes me feel a little physically sick. I don't need it personalised, I just need it absent.

The problem is that people are trying to have different experiences at the airport.

Some people are trying to work, some people want to sleep, some people are reading or watching their own media. I'll sometimes go to an unoccupied gate if I need to make a phone call, since nobody wants to share that.

Seattle airport had some live music in a large public space, and it was a great shared experience. Piped music is not an experience in the same way, not in the slightest.

They also have important announcements I can never understand because of all that other stuff.

I noticed TVs in DAL muted with an invitation to download the Tunity app if you wanted to listen [1]. Id rather therr were no TVs, but this is a reasonable compromise.

[1] https://qz.com/465630/theres-an-app-to-listen-to-silent-tvs-...

Some years ago I was introduced to Brian Eno's 'Music For Airports', a set of music intentionally created to be played specifically in airports.

Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykJg-vE3k-E

The Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDxm_6URL8M

When I go to the gym they are always playing the most atrocious garbage at a deafening volume. Is there any way to locally hijack a Sirius XM signal and have it play something else?

My wife says it’s bad at her gym too, but if the music isn’t playing you hear all the grunting and clacking.

You can set your own music to whatever volume you want, instead of being forced to turn it up to overpower the piped music...

NYC has become increasingly insufferable with what appears to be an unmitigated need for music everywhere, all the time. The bar blasts music so you shout. The restaurant does to, and everyone's shouting across tables. The Uber driver plays his terrible radio hip hop permeated by long commercial breaks. People blast music in their backyards that make your house shake. Cars drive past with a similar blast.

It's not cool, especially if you're the type of person who reads, studies, writes or codes.

What is going on in US culture? The article above references UK anti noise groups and the desire to spread that to the US. I assure you the UK is much quieter as there's more of a reading and whispering culture.

What's happening here, is it a reflection of an ignorant or anti intellectual population? Or am I just sensitive to distraction?

As a Scottish person, I read the link title and got defensive.

And my first thought was of pipe organs.

My father plays oboe. He was surprised to learn, in late middle age, that bagpipes have reeds.

I've been wondering about something else - who determines, how, which music to play in stores, and is there money in offering something better? In a few stores the music is surprisingly good, in most it is awful. There is a bar that I like among other things because it plays good music on high quality speakers. I believe that there is a market for good music. The charts are bent by the type of people who still buy music in ways that are reflected in the charts. An example of IMO good music that I think most people can enjoy would be Ladytron.

Music is not or bad; it's subjective. There's a whole industry that provides music for stores and cafes, and big chain clothing stores that care about their brand do careful music selection so it fits their demographic; young adult brands mass-market brands like Zara and Topman, in particular, come to mind.

As far as bars and clubs go, music is often their defining individual trait. I used to DJ in a small bar on a crowded bar street; these places offered the same drinks at the same prices, but each had their own visual and musical style - one had a mexican-ish feel, another was all about classic rock, third one top40 and trap music in particular, and one I played at was a moody techno place.

What's curious is that most people actually went back and forth between these places all the time - seems like they liked variety more than any particular music genre.

You seem to be implying partially that it's about which style of music to play. That is not what I mean, although I do like or not like certain styles.

I think that people who don't care much about music either way (who are responsible for most bad music) are easily convinced of something better. A famous example of great taste in music is John Peel. He could figure out what people would eventually like because he just knew it was good. AFAICT he wasn't just trying to predict what would sell best in the near future, he just trusted his taste.

Taste isn't 100% subjective - otherwise what's the point of ratings? This discussion comes up on sites such as this regularly and I'm on the side that good and bad art exists. I don't think it is worth rehashing that discussion, if we disagree we should just agree to disagree.

My mother works in Barnes & Noble. The corporation supplies each store with a selection of music that changes periodically (once a week or month, maybe). I don't know how the decision is actually made in the corporate offices, though.

I don't really want "good music" playing around all the time, though. It's a distraction from whatever I'm trying to do. Something quiet that kind of blends into the background is fine, though.

I've seen multiple bits of documentation supporting the idea that adding music makes the ambient noise noticeably higher, as people attempt to talk over it. I'm all for this. Restaurants that don't play ambient music are so much nicer, whether you're talking or just quietly enjoying.

I think the volume and your preference for the music matter a lot. Some places I visit, I love the music and it makes me want to stay longer and come back. In other places, I hate it and want to avoid it.

It's not all bad. Back in the 90's I was working out at a gym in San Jose and heard a song that kind of haunted me for a few years. As the internet gained in the ability to search for obscure music, I would try to find it based on a few lyrics that I'd committed to memory.

Eventually I was able to trace it to a forgotten Sandra Bullock movie and from there to an Australian singer whose life was sadly cut short after experiencing brief success the early 90's.

I think everyone has that one song they love, even though no one else has ever even heard of it.

https://vimeo.com/101789691

Honestly, I actually really enjoy the music they play in stores. It's nice to have some background tunes that are typically upbeat to sort of make shopping less painful than it would be otherwise.

I've always been a bit curious if it was worth the cost in larger stores. You sometimes notice that it's quiet in some areas because they weren't willing to install enough speakers for full coverage.

Reading the headline made me think it was a Backlash against Piped Piper Music...

... which as proven by the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, is awesome.

This is so first world problems that it hurts.

The thing about first world problems is that, while they're not life threatening, they're real problems.

The trend for a lot of bars to have hardwood floors that don't deaden sound that well and causes bar staff hearing problems is not a first world problem its the same problem as say hearing loss in a gold miner in Africa for example

I'm not completely sure that I'd actually call it a "problem" though. I'm usually completely oblivious to it until I hear something that I can hum along to.

The last two I can think of are my wife's comments about some particular singer's song that's been playing a lot this Christmas season, and about a month ago when I was humming along to some Muse in a pizza parlor.

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