Companies spend heavily on visual branding, digital marketing, store design and customer service, but they often give far less thought to what people hear when they walk into a store, restaurant, hotel or office. Background music can shape how customers see a space. Picking songs is only part of the job, though: a business also needs reliable audio technology, consistent playback, sensible volume levels and a music license that covers commercial use.

For companies with multiple locations, sound is turning into one more piece of customer experience management, planned and checked alongside lighting, layout and digital signage.

What Sound Does for a Space

A quiet hotel lobby with soft instrumental music gives a different impression from a fitness studio playing high-energy tracks.…