Music for Retail Businesses: How to Get It Right

The right music does more than fill silence. It changes how long customers stay, how they feel about your brand, and whether they come back. Here’s what you need to know to choose and use it well.

What does music actually do in a retail environment?

Music for retail businesses is one of the most underused and undervalued tools in the in-store experience. When it’s right, customers stay longer, spend more, and leave with a better feeling about your brand. When it’s wrong, it is the thing they notice above everything else.

Research is consistent on this: the right music can increase sales by up to 9%. Customers exposed to music that fits the brand and the moment spend longer in store, are more relaxed, and are more likely to make unplanned purchases. That is not a small number for what is, relative to most retail investments, a modest cost.

The retailers who treat music as a strategic tool rather than an operational afterthought consistently outperform those who leave it to chance or, worse, let staff plug in a phone.

What features should you look for in a retail music service?

Not all retail music services are built the same. The difference between a basic streaming solution and a platform built for retail is significant, and it shows up in the day-to-day experience of managing it and in what your customers actually feel when they walk in.

Licensing compliance

This is non-negotiable and it catches more retailers out than it should. Playing music in a commercial space is not the same as playing it at home. You need a public performance licence, which is separate from a personal or consumer streaming subscription. Using Spotify in a retail environment, for example, is against their terms and conditions and can result in fines.

In Australia, public performance rights are managed through PPCA and APRA AMCOS. A compliant retail music service will either include the necessary licensing or make it straightforward to obtain. If a provider is vague about licensing, that is a red flag.

Scheduling and control

Good retail music services let you schedule what plays, when, and where. That might mean different playlists for different times of day, or different music for different store formats. A flagship in Sydney CBD and a suburban store should not be playing the same thing. The ability to set and forget, while retaining the ability to change things quickly, is what separates a proper platform from a playlist someone made in 2019.

Centralised management across locations

For multi-site retailers, this is where most basic services fall apart. Managing music across 50 or 200 stores should not mean 50 or 200 separate logins, manual updates, or relying on staff to do the right thing. A proper retail music platform lets you manage everything from a single dashboard and push changes across your entire network instantly.

Integration with the rest of your in-store experience

Music does not exist in isolation. The best retail environments coordinate audio with digital signage, scenting, lighting, and even staff scheduling. A service that operates as a standalone tool will always produce a less coherent result than one that is part of a unified experience platform.

How do you match music to your retail brand?

This is where most retailers either get it right or get it badly wrong. The music in your store is a direct expression of your brand identity. It should not be chosen by whoever is working the floor that day, and it should not be whatever is on the top of a generic ‘retail’ playlist.

The most effective approach is to start with your brand archetype. Who are you? What do you stand for? What does your customer look and feel like when they are at their most loyal to you?

Take RM Williams as an example. They are an Explorer brand with a distinctly Australian heritage. Their music should evoke that: a sense of space, authenticity, and quality without pretension. That might mean Great Southern Land sits comfortably alongside more contemporary artists who carry the same DNA. What it does not mean is the same playlist as a fast-fashion retailer or a budget homewares chain.

Brand archetypes also account for variation across a network. An RM Williams store on Oxford Street in London serves a different customer moment than one in Rockhampton. The archetype stays the same. The calibration of the playlist shifts.

What are the licensing requirements for music in retail businesses?

If you are playing music in a commercial environment, you need a public performance licence. This is true whether you are playing from a streaming service, a curated playlist, or physical media. The licence compensates the artists and rights holders whose work you are using.

Who manages music licensing in Australia?

In Australia, two main organisations manage music licensing for retail businesses. PPCA covers recorded music, meaning the actual sound recordings. APRA AMCOS covers the underlying compositions, meaning the songs themselves. Most retailers playing commercial music in-store require licences that address both.

Licence fees are typically calculated based on the size of your premises and the nature of your business. For most retailers, the cost is modest compared to the legal and reputational risk of non-compliance.

What about Spotify and consumer streaming services?

Consumer streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, and similar platforms, are licensed for personal use only. Their terms and conditions explicitly prohibit use in commercial environments. This means using Spotify in your store without a commercial licence is both a breach of the platform’s terms and potentially a breach of copyright law.

A commercial retail music service includes or facilitates the correct licensing. It is one of the clearest practical reasons to use a proper platform rather than a consumer solution.

How does combining music with digital signage improve the retail experience?

Music and digital signage are more powerful together than either is alone. When audio and visuals are coordinated, they create something that feels intentional: an environment that holds attention, communicates the brand, and guides the customer through the store more effectively.

Venues using digital signage report up to a 20% revenue uplift. That number increases when signage is coordinated with the audio environment rather than running independently. The reason is simple: coherent sensory experiences hold attention longer and are more memorable than fragmented ones.

What does coordination actually look like in practice?

It might mean a promotion on screen is timed to coincide with a relevant playlist shift. It might mean the energy of the music matches the visual content during a campaign. It might mean a quiet time, where music, signage, and lighting all adjust simultaneously to create a calmer environment for shoppers who need it.

That last example matters more than many retailers realise. Around 20% of the population identify as having some form of neurodiversity. A retail environment that can offer a quieter, lower-sensory experience for part of the day builds a loyalty that competitors without that capability simply cannot match.

What return on investment should retailers expect from a music service?

The research case is strong. The practical question is how to quantify it for your business before you commit. Here are the benchmarks worth using.

The honest answer on ROI is that it depends on how well the music is matched to the brand and the customer. A generic playlist delivers a fraction of the return that a properly curated, brand-aligned music strategy delivers. The platform matters, but the thinking behind the music matters more.

When you add digital signage, scenting, and queuing to the equation, and manage all of them through a unified platform, the compound effect is meaningfully greater than the sum of the parts.

How do retail music services work for multi-site businesses?

For retailers operating across multiple locations, consistent music management is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. The challenge: keeping every store on-brand when you cannot physically be in all of them. The opportunity: a centrally managed platform lets you do exactly that, at scale, without the overhead.

The gap between a brand’s flagship store and its regional locations is one of the most common problems in retail experience management. The flagship has the full treatment: curated music, digital signage, scenting, and staff who understand the brand. The regional store has whatever was set up last time someone remembered to look at it.

A proper retail music platform closes that gap. Push a new playlist to every store in your network from one screen. Schedule a campaign to activate at the same time across all locations. Adjust the experience for a specific region without touching every other store. That is what centralised control actually means in practice.

How do you choose the right retail music service for your business?

Start with the questions that will determine whether a service actually fits your business.

• Does it include or facilitate compliant licensing? If not, walk away.
• Can you schedule and customise playlists by time of day, location type, or campaign? Flexibility here matters.
• Does it work for your number of locations, and can it scale if you grow?
• Does it integrate with your digital signage, or does it operate as a standalone tool?
• Can you manage it centrally without requiring technical support every time you want to make a change?
• Does the provider understand retail, or are they a music app with a commercial licence bolted on?

The last question is worth pressing on. There is a meaningful difference between a consumer music platform that has been adapted for retail and a platform built from the ground up for the retail environment. The latter will understand brand archetypes, multi-site management, sensory experience design, and the operational realities of running stores. The former will not.

About Storeplay

Storeplay is a retail experience platform used by retailers across 40+ countries. We combine music, digital signage, scenting, queuing, and retail media into a single platform, so every part of your in-store experience works together. We’ve been doing this for 36 years. If you’re thinking about your in-store music strategy, talk to us.