How to Choose Background Music for Your Business

I have a confession. For the first two years I ran my cafe, I picked the music the same way I picked what to wear — whatever I felt like that morning. Some days it was Tom Waits. Some days it was Radiohead. Once, during a particularly self-indulgent stretch in January, I played nothing but Miles Davis for a week straight.

The music was good. My taste isn't the problem. The problem was that I was choosing for myself, not for the room. And the room — a small cafe on the main street of a small resort town — had its own needs that had nothing to do with my personal listening history.

It took me a while to figure that out. And it took me longer to build a framework for choosing background music that actually works — not based on what I like, but based on what the space needs, what the research says, and what the register tape confirms.

This is that framework.

Start with the room, not the music

The single most important question in choosing background music has nothing to do with genre or tempo. It's this: what is this space trying to be?

Not what you want it to be in your head. What it actually is, right now, to the people who walk through the door.

A fast-casual lunch spot where people grab sandwiches and leave in twelve minutes is a fundamentally different room than a third-wave coffee shop where people set up laptops and stay for three hours. A high-end cocktail bar is a different room than a brewery taproom. A yoga studio is a different room than a CrossFit box. The music should reflect the room's actual identity, not the owner's aspirations.

I learned this the hard way. For months, I played moody, complex jazz in my cafe because I wanted it to feel like a serious coffee place. The problem: my actual customers were families on vacation and retirees who wanted a muffin and a view of the lake. The music was telling them they were in the wrong place. I was losing people before they ordered.

When I switched to something warmer — softer acoustic, occasional bossa nova, low-key instrumental — the room relaxed. People stayed. The average ticket went up. Nothing else changed.

The identity audit

Before you pick a single track, answer these honestly:

• Who actually walks in? Not your ideal customer. Your real one.
• How long do they stay? Five minutes? Thirty? Two hours?
• What are they doing? Eating? Working? Browsing? Waiting?
• What time of day is busiest? Morning, lunch, evening?
• What's the noise floor? Quiet room with hard surfaces? Loud room with carpet and curtains?

These answers determine everything. A place where people stay two hours needs music that doesn't fatigue. A place with five-minute visits needs music that sets a tone quickly and doesn't demand attention. A place that's quiet needs music at a different volume than a place that's loud.

The music is not the experience. The music supports the experience. If you start from the music and work backward, you'll always be fighting the room.

Tempo: the invisible speed dial

Research has consistently shown that tempo — the speed of the music, measured in beats per minute — directly affects how long customers stay and how much they spend. Ronald Milliman's landmark 1982 study in restaurants found that slow music (under 72 BPM) kept diners at their tables longer and increased per-table spending. Fast music (above 92 BPM) moved people through faster.

Neither is automatically better. It depends on what you need.

Morning in most businesses calls for something slower. People are arriving, settling in, easing into their day. Pushing uptempo music at 7 AM feels aggressive, like the room is rushing you before you've had coffee.

Midday can handle more energy. The room is fuller, conversation is louder, the natural pace picks up. Music that matches that energy feels right. Music that fights it — either too slow for a busy lunch rush or too fast for a quiet afternoon — creates a subtle dissonance.

Evening depends entirely on what kind of business you run. A restaurant that wants lingering dinners should slow the tempo. A bar that wants energy should push it up. A retail store near closing should probably lean faster — it signals that the day is winding down.

The key insight: tempo should change throughout the day. A single playlist running from open to close is like setting the thermostat once and never touching it. The room changes. The music should change with it.

Genre: the story your room tells

Genre is less about specific artists and more about the atmospheric signal you're sending. Every genre carries cultural associations, and your customers read those associations whether they're aware of it or not.

A study by Areni and Kim in 1993 found that playing classical music in a wine store led customers to buy more expensive bottles. The music didn't make the wine better. It made the context feel more upscale, and people responded by reaching for the premium shelf.

Here's a rough map of what different genres communicate:

The most common mistake I see is incongruence — when the music doesn't match the space's personality. A sleek minimalist restaurant playing country. A cozy bookshop playing EDM. A yoga studio playing pop hits. The mismatch doesn't just feel wrong — it actively undermines the experience. Customers may not consciously register what's off, but they feel it, and "something feels off" is the beginning of a shorter visit.

The second most common mistake is playing what you personally love. I cannot stress this enough. Your business is not your living room. The music serves the customer, not the owner. I love Nick Cave. Nick Cave at breakfast in a family cafe would be a disaster.

Volume: the setting everyone ignores

Volume is the most neglected variable in background music, and it might be the easiest to fix.

Research published in the Journal of Business Research found that ambient sound at approximately 70 decibels — roughly the level of a moderately busy coffee shop — is the sweet spot for comfort and creative thinking. Below 60 dB, a room feels uncomfortably quiet. Conversations become self-conscious. Above 80 dB, music competes with conversation, and people start raising their voices, which raises the overall noise level, which leads to the music being turned up further, creating a feedback loop that nobody wins.

Here's what I do at my cafe, and what I'd recommend for any business:

When the room is empty: Music a bit louder. It fills the space, makes it feel alive, prevents that eerie silence that makes the first customer through the door feel like they're intruding on something.

As the room fills: Music comes down. The crowd becomes the ambient layer. The music just needs to be texture underneath the conversation — audible, but not competing.

During a rush: Music lower still. When the room is packed and loud, the music is mostly a subconscious element. If people can't hear each other talking, the music is too loud. Always.

As the room empties: Music back up. The thinning crowd makes the room feel emptier than it is, and a little more volume smooths that transition.

I adjust the volume three or four times a day. It takes five seconds each time. The difference between a room that feels right and a room that feels like someone left a radio on is usually just two or three notches on the dial.

Lyrics: the hidden distraction

This one surprised me. Cognitive research consistently shows that music with recognizable lyrics competes with language processing. Your brain can't fully ignore words being sung in a language it understands, especially familiar songs. The result: when lyrics are playing, reading is harder, conversation takes more effort, and focused work suffers.

For most businesses during most hours, instrumental music or music with indistinct vocals is the safer choice. It stays in the background where it belongs. It shapes the room without pulling attention.

Exceptions exist. A bar at 10 PM wants singalongs. A gym wants lyrics that drive intensity. A retail store during a busy Saturday might benefit from recognizable music that creates energy. But for cafes, restaurants, offices, spas, and anywhere people are trying to think, talk, or relax — instrumental wins.

I used to play a lot of singer-songwriter music at the cafe. Beautiful stuff. My customers liked individual songs. But dwell time was lower, and the room was noisier — people raising their voices to talk over the vocals without realizing they were doing it. When I switched to mostly instrumental, the room got quieter and people stayed longer. The music got out of the way.

Freshness: the variable that breaks slowly

Everything above is about getting the music right. This is about keeping it right.

A playlist that's perfect on day one can curdle by week three. If you're running a fixed library of a few hundred tracks on shuffle, the repetition creeps in slowly — first your staff notice it, then your regulars, then the room itself starts to feel like a recording you've heard before. The music stops being background and becomes a loop.

The fix is depth. A catalog that's deep enough — and growing — never loops back on itself within the span of a customer's visit or a barista's shift. When you're evaluating any music option, ask one question: will this still feel fresh in a month? A shallow library won't. A deep, always-growing one will.

I built Puana around exactly this — original music made for spaces, an ever-growing catalog tagged by feeling so it never fatigues, $19/month per location. You describe the room; the right music plays, and it keeps being right.

Building a day-part strategy

The most practical thing you can do — the thing that will have the most immediate impact — is stop thinking about background music as a single decision and start thinking about it as a schedule.

Here's a template that works for most hospitality businesses:

Morning (open - 11 AM)

• Tempo: 60-80 BPM
• Genre: Acoustic, soft jazz, ambient piano
• Volume: Medium (fills empty space, comes down as people arrive)
• Energy: Calm, warm, unhurried

Midday (11 AM - 2 PM)

• Tempo: 80-100 BPM
• Genre: Bossa nova, acoustic pop, light indie
• Volume: Medium-low (room is filling, crowd noise takes over)
• Energy: Slightly lifted, matches lunch pace

Afternoon (2 PM - 5 PM)

• Tempo: 70-90 BPM
• Genre: Lo-fi, ambient, soft acoustic
• Volume: Medium (room thins, music fills the gap)
• Energy: Relaxed, conducive to lingering or working

Evening (5 PM - close)

• Tempo: Depends on your business
• Genre: Jazz, R&B, deeper acoustic for dining; uptempo for bars
• Volume: Start medium, adjust to crowd
• Energy: Match the mood you want — intimate dinners want slow, social bars want energy

This isn't rigid. It's a starting point. The specifics depend on your room, your customers, and what you're trying to create. But having a structure — even a rough one — is infinitely better than pressing play on the same generic playlist every morning and forgetting about it until close.

The things I wish someone had told me

After running my cafe for years and building a background music platform, here's what I know now that I didn't know then:

Music is not decoration. It's infrastructure. It shapes how long people stay, how much they spend, how they feel about your space, and whether they come back. Treating it as an afterthought costs you money — you just can't see it on a line item.

Your taste is irrelevant. I mean that with respect. Your taste tells you what you'd want to hear at home. Your business needs music that serves the room, and those are often different things.

Change is cheap. Unlike renovating or hiring, changing your music costs almost nothing and can have an immediate, measurable effect on your business. If something isn't working, try something different tomorrow. Track the register tape. Pay attention.

Volume matters more than genre. I've seen great playlists ruined by bad volume and mediocre playlists elevated by good volume management. If you only change one thing after reading this, adjust your volume throughout the day.

Freshness is a feature, not an afterthought. The music that's working today will fatigue if it loops. Choose something deep enough — and renewed often enough — that the room never hears the same morning twice. Staleness is invisible until it isn't, and by then your regulars have already felt it.

The right music, at the right volume, at the right time of day, in a room that it actually fits — that's not a luxury. That's one of the cheapest, most effective investments any business can make. And if you're intentional about it, you'll feel the difference the first day.

Jesse Meria is the founder of Puana. He writes about background music because he spent years getting it wrong before he got it right.