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Starbucks' Music Is Driving Employees Nuts (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: You may not give a second thought to the tunes spinning on a constant loop at your favorite cafe or coffee shop, but one writer and podcaster who had to listen to repetitive music for years while working in bars and restaurants argues it's a serious workers' rights issue. "[It's] the same system that's used to [...] flood people out of, you know, the Branch Davidian in Waco or was used on terror suspects in Guantanamo -- they use the repetition of music," Adam Johnson told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti. "I'm not suggesting that working at Applebee's is the same as being at Guantanamo, but the principle's the same."
Earlier this year, irritated Starbucks employees took to Reddit to rage about how they had to listen to the same songs from the Broadway hit musical Hamilton on repeat while on the job. One user wrote that if they heard a Hamilton song one more time, "I'm getting a ladder and ripping out all of our speakers from the ceiling." As a solution, he suggested health inspectors could enforce better working conditions, or a tip line could be created for people to report poor working conditions, like repetitive music. Another solution? Communication, says neuroscientist Jessica Grahn. She studies music, which science has shown to be one of the strongest influencers of mood, she said. It can calm dementia patients struggling with depression or anger, or increase our endurance when we're working out. However, there are downsides to the power of music. Unlike how we can close our eyes to things we don't want to see, we can't close our ears to sound. Having control over one's environment can make a big difference, said Grahn, which is why she recommends employers and employees talk about why certain music is being played, or what they can do to switch things up.
Earlier this year, irritated Starbucks employees took to Reddit to rage about how they had to listen to the same songs from the Broadway hit musical Hamilton on repeat while on the job. One user wrote that if they heard a Hamilton song one more time, "I'm getting a ladder and ripping out all of our speakers from the ceiling." As a solution, he suggested health inspectors could enforce better working conditions, or a tip line could be created for people to report poor working conditions, like repetitive music. Another solution? Communication, says neuroscientist Jessica Grahn. She studies music, which science has shown to be one of the strongest influencers of mood, she said. It can calm dementia patients struggling with depression or anger, or increase our endurance when we're working out. However, there are downsides to the power of music. Unlike how we can close our eyes to things we don't want to see, we can't close our ears to sound. Having control over one's environment can make a big difference, said Grahn, which is why she recommends employers and employees talk about why certain music is being played, or what they can do to switch things up.
We used to have a 4 hour tape loop that they used for 3 months at a time. It took a couple of weeks, but you did get tired of hearing the same songs in the same order every day.
Given that a simple old ipod shuffle could hold a couple of days worth of music and change things up automatically, why would any business use a tape loop these days?
"I'm not suggesting that working at Applebee's is the same as being at Guantanamo, but the principle's the same."
Food’s probably better at Guantanamo, for one thing.
#DeleteChrome
Anyone who has worked in retail knows the torturous effects of Christmas music. It's hard to be festive or jolly when you have heard Jingle Bell Rock too many times.
Loud music is the aural equivalent of lasers and strobe lights. Unless you're operating a club please don't harass your employees and customers with it.
If silence is a problem, textured ambient sounds can give your business far more personality than blaring the Billboard Top 40.
These days everybody carries around earbuds and a smartphone. If people actually want to listen to music, they will.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
What about the theme park employees stuck in the same non-stop single-song loop forever?
Now, for the grace of the mighty heroes and heroines that have survive those Gitmo-like circumstances every day... let us sing a song:
It's a small world after all...
why the hell is there a need to continuously blast music in a coffee shop, to begin with?
have human gotten so used to watching movies that they can't imagine anything in life without a background music track?
or is the the coffee shop's attempt to try to do the same manipulations as clothes stores to try to maximize profits? (playing catchy upbeat music apparently increases the probability of impulse buys ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If silence is a problem,
indeed, what's wrong with silence?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's why he says "_IF_ I own a business". He doesn't. He never will.
If he ever tried, the employee churn would destroy it soon enough.
consumers and customers. People should not be forced to listen to modern versuon of Muzak.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
... but the way the charts are measured these days means is basically the musical taste of young teenage girls.
It's far worse in Japan. I don't know how staff there put up with it. Many shops in Japan have their own theme music. Actually a theme song, with lyrics.
That sounds awful. I used to work at a company in an engineering office that for some reason felt the need to have a 6 song rotation playing on the overhead speakers all day. I don't care how much you like a piece of music (and I didn't like these) you will be ready to burn the place down after enough repetitions of a song. After the literally 200th+ time I heard the theme song to Titanic I came in after hours and disabled the speaker above my cubicle just to get some relief. (No we weren't allowed to wear headphones)
There's a simple solution for employees that no longer care to operate per the environment I created, find somewhere else to work
Oh it's adorable that you think employee opinions don't matter. You have never run a business have you? Piss off your employees and they'll run you out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11 bankruptcy". Just because you have the legal right to do something as a business owner doesn't make it a good idea. Employee moral matters. More than you can imagine. If you care about the bottom line you do as much as you can to keep employee morale high because happy employees by and large make better employees. If you think otherwise you've never run a business.
For the record I have and do manage people and have been a business owner so I've seen all this first hand.
It would not be at all surprising if the tape loop is quite deliberate:
Oh it's absolutely deliberate. Large consumer product and retail companies don't do stuff like that by accident. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a good choice but it's probably a deliberate one. To be fair, there is only so much budget for music choices and the people selecting the music probably don't have to listen to it all day long. (or if they do they need to get psychiatric help...)
Starbucks(along with most other retail establishments) has clearly gone to a lot of trouble to establish a particular 'feel'/'branding' in their interior and exterior design, staff uniforms, product graphic design, even what's printed on their paper cups and napkins and stuff.
Exactly which is why they are loathe to take needless risks with something as mundane as a playlist. It's not hard to come up with a 6 song on-brand playlist that won't turn off customers. Coming up with one that doesn't repeat for an 8 hour shift is considerably harder. And since the customers aren't usually in there for long, the employees get to suck it up.
They just need to play more stuff like Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Music that just sits there in the background, covering up the total silence, but that also is interesting if you sit and listen to it carefully.
The stupid thing is really, in the past, you can get music systems that did not repeat for several days. This went all the way back too - the Seeburg 1000 was a record player that could be loaded with 1000 hours of music. Granted the music was not of great quality since the discs were spun slower than normal as well as having a lot of discs, but there was a huge long loop of music.
Even as everything got more modern it was possible to get at least a day's worth of audio off two audio cassettes, again run at half speed and mono (the PA speakers are mono, and not of terribly great quality so you can get by with lower quality music recordings).
The most modern of these systems used DVDs filled with music as well. And again, they lasted several days before they repeated.
And all of course were subscription based so you got a new set of vinyls, tapes, CDs or DVDs every couple of months to keep the music refreshed (as well as replace worn media).
And today's systems are online based - muzak corp offers streaming (and licensed streams from your usual spotify and others streaming services as well) if you cannot or don't want to use their FM/satellite based streaming audio. All fully commercially licensed.
Of course, what really happens these days is people don't want to pay muzak and the like for long play licensed music, and thus stick with whatever they can get cheaply licensed (or freely licensed) and put it on a CD which they repeat day in and day out. And as we all know, a CD only lasts around 80 minutes, at which point the music repeats.
Muzak and company intentionally lowered the audio quality so they could at least get a day's worth of music in without repeats - often with the technology they could get much more music in so even if you listened to the same thing for weeks on end, you'd really only hear it repeat a few times because the play loop was so long. (And longer now due to streaming)