Does this strike you as a viable solution? Everyone goes to the front desk and requests that the gym play music to suit their personal taste? How does that work out for the rest of the people in the gym that have different musical tastes?
Also wearing earbuds doesn't mean someone doesn't value "awareness." I can listen to my music and not compromise my visual awareness in the least.
Do you have some data supporting this statistic?
Just an exercise I suggest you approach the staff at your local gym and ask them to play personal DJ for you. I'm fairly confident what the outcome of that interaction will be.
Muzak and SiriusXM have ready-made solutions for exactly what these sorts of businesses are looking for.
Not a Spotify user so I don't know what I'm talking about, but it sounds like this might be a feature they could implement...some sort of "Jukebox mode," whereby anyone w/the Spotify app could make requests for the local area, given the right password (put on a whiteboard or something, the way we do for wifi).
a) Having a pre-made list of songs that users can select from. Something like a list of 1,000s of Top 40s going back a few decades, or a selection of the top 10 hits from a list of grammy-winning artists, being able to split the songs into genres and select certain genres, etc. The idea is to not allow users to submit songs that fits the atmosphere of the venue (e.g. prevent ambient music in a gym, only allow country in a southern bar, etc)
b) Preventing the same song playing within the same hour, and possibly preventing the same artist from playing ~3x in a row
c) Preventing users from submitting songs consecutively, such as 1 submission per every 30 minutes d) Monetize by allowing small fees to push your jukebox songs to the top of the queue ($0.99?)