A three hour set sounds reasonable until you count how many times it turns over during a day. In a venue open from morning to evening it will manage four rotations, and the staff will hear it some twenty times a week. That is where the feeling that it is always the same comes from.
This is a purely practical article: about the length of a set, about the loop effect and about spreading music across a working day. Not about genres or moods - on choosing the repertoire we wrote in our piece on background music for a cafe, a hotel and a restaurant.
The starting point is simple: a playlist is put together for whoever listens to it most. And that is almost never the client.
- Measure the length of a set in opening hours, not in the number of tracks.
- The client hears a fragment, the staff hear all of it - and they are the proper measure.
- A fixed running order tires people faster than the repertoire itself does.
- Splitting the day into blocks gives more perceived variety than one long list does.
- A seasonal set switched on too early will have worn thin before the season even starts.
Count the hours, not the tracks
The first thing to settle is not the repertoire but the arithmetic. How many hours a day does music play at your place? A cafe open from seven to eight in the evening plays thirteen hours. A salon from nine to six plays nine. A treatment room from eight to four plays eight.
Now divide that by the length of your set. A three hour list in a cafe turns over four times a day, in a salon three. An eight hour set plays once, and that is what to aim at, because a client dropping in twice a week at different times then has a chance of hearing something different.
For the record: what counts is the length of the material, not the number of recordings. Several dozen short tracks may add up to less time than a dozen or so longer ones.
The measure is the employee, not the client
A guest in a cafe sits for a quarter of an hour, maybe half an hour. A client at the hairdresser's for two hours. A patient in a waiting area for a dozen minutes. Each of them hears a slice.
The barista, the receptionist and the person at the front desk hear all of it. Every day, for a whole shift, five or six days a week. With a three hour set the staff go through it more than twenty times a week. After a month they know the order by heart and start counting down to the end.
That is not an aesthetic problem but an organisational one. Staff tired of the music do one of two things: turn it down to zero or swap it for something of their own. In both cases the venue loses control over what is playing, and that comes back later as a different sort of trouble.
The loop effect, or why three hours is too little
Repetition tires people through predictability rather than through content. After a few days you start recognising the landmarks: the distinctive opening of one track, the silence before another, the moment when the same instrument always comes in. The playlist turns into a clock and the staff can tell the time by it.
Two things deepen the effect. The first is a fixed running order: if the tracks always follow one another in the same way, the loop becomes audible far sooner. The second is how distinctive the recordings are - a characteristic voice or a strong theme sticks in the memory after two hearings, while a calm, even background stands up to repetition far better.
Blocks by part of the day
The simplest way to extend perceived variety without enlarging the library is to split the day into blocks: morning, afternoon, evening. Three blocks of two hours are still six hours of material, but each of them comes round less often and is tied to a different part of the day.
It has one more advantage, this time organisational: a change of block is a signal to the staff that one part of the day is ending and the next is beginning. In hospitality that is clearest, and we wrote about it in our piece on music in a restaurant from breakfast to the evening, but the division works anywhere a working day has distinct phases.
Where to place the edge of a block
The edges of blocks are best placed where the rhythm of work changes anyway, rather than at even intervals on the clock. In a cafe the natural point is the end of the morning rush, in a restaurant the gap between lunch and dinner, in a salon the moment the first round of appointments ends. A block changed at such a moment surprises nobody, because it overlaps with something that is happening anyway. A block changed in the middle of the busiest hour tends to be read as a fault in the equipment.
How to put a set together
- Start from the opening hours - they set the minimum length of the material.
- Split the day into phases - as many blocks as your working day has, usually two or three.
- Choose material for each phase separately - and check that the transition between blocks is not too abrupt.
- Shuffle the order inside a block - avoid placing similar recordings side by side.
- Listen to the whole thing in the room - not on headphones at home, but with the coffee machine and the ventilation running.
- Ask the staff after two weeks - the fastest test you have to hand.
The best test of the length of a set costs nothing: for one week, note on a sheet behind the counter every time somebody from the staff remarks that it is the same thing again. Three marks within five days mean the set is too short.
When to refresh it, and what about December
A set does not age by the calendar but by the way people react to it. The signal is always the same: the staff start commenting, turning it down or asking for a change. If none of that is happening, you need do nothing.
A good moment to refresh it is often the one at which you change the seasonal menu or replace the material on the tables - both are planned ahead, on the same principles. Placemats, table presenters and menu cards are in the HoReCa section.
December is a separate matter. Seasonal material has a strong, recognisable colour, and for that reason it stands up to repetition worse than an ordinary background. Switched on too early it works against itself: by the time the days arrive on which it should really build the mood, the staff have had enough of it and guests have stopped noticing it. It is wiser to keep it for a shorter stretch and switch it on when it genuinely works. Preparing it, though, is worth doing far in advance - decisions of that kind are made in the ordering season, not the listening season.
The carrier and the length
The length of the material is worth agreeing with the carrier before you order anything. A single CD disc has a limited capacity, so a longer set naturally divides into several discs. With blocks by part of the day that can be an advantage, because each block gets its own disc and its own description, and the staff do not have to hunt through folders.
A memory stick holds more, but it needs equipment with a USB socket and tidy file names - otherwise the playback order can take you by surprise, because devices read them alphabetically, not the way you meant. With a carrier the staff pull out and plug back in every day, less goes missing with the Twister model - the connector swivels away, so there is no separate cap.
The question of how much music is needed has a simple answer: enough that somebody working a whole shift does not start counting it down. A client forgives a repeat, because they will not hear it. The staff hear every one, and they finally decide whether your music really plays or is merely switched on.
