The Retail Music Playbook: How Sound Sells
Every retail floor already has a soundtrack, even when no one chose it on purpose. How to make sound sell instead of just fill the space.
Read article → Melodial Curated Your brand has a sound.
Your brand has a sound.
Let us find it.
A hand-crafted playlist, built from the ground up around your brand's identity, and kept fresh, season after season, by our music team.
Available to all Melodial Plus subscribers · Priced with our team
Why music matters
Music is not background. It is the atmosphere you sell.
+20%
Longer dwell time
Studies consistently show that customers in retail stores and hospitality venues playing contextually matched music at the right tempo browse and linger significantly longer. More time in the room means more opportunity to spend.
+15%
Higher spend per visit
In hospitality, slower-tempo background music has been shown to increase food and beverage spend per head by slowing the pace of the room and encouraging guests to linger, order more, and return.
↑
Brand recall and loyalty
Sound is processed more emotionally than any other sense. A consistent sonic identity, music that feels unmistakably yours, builds recognition, comfort and the kind of loyalty that no loyalty card can manufacture.
What's included
One playlist. Every location. Always fresh.
As much music as you need
We curate however much music your brand calls for, built specifically around your customer profile and environment, with no fixed track count or run-time.
Bimonthly refresh
Every two months, our team removes approximately 10% of the playlist and replaces it with fresh selections, keeping the sound alive for both staff and returning guests.
Accessible across all locations
A single Curated playlist is available to every Melodial Plus licence in your account, every location, every zone, no additional cost per site.
Optional time-of-day splits
For cafés, restaurants and retailers, we can produce multiple playlist variants (e.g. morning, afternoon, evening) at the same annual fee, schedulable via your Plus dashboard.
Scoped with our team
Available exclusively to Melodial Plus subscribers. Covers creation, bimonthly maintenance, and access across every location and zone in your account.
How it works
From brief to playlist in three steps
1
Brief and brand discovery
We meet with your team to understand your brand, your customer, your vision and your environment. We talk about tempo, genre, energy, era, and the feeling you want people to carry with them when they leave. Nothing is too abstract.
2
Production and delivery
Our music team builds your playlist from scratch. Every track is selected by hand, not by algorithm, against the brief. We sequence for flow, manage energy arcs, and ensure the whole moves the way your space should move.
3
Bimonthly maintenance
At the two-month mark, our team revisits the playlist. Around 10% of tracks are retired and replaced with fresh material in line with the original scope. This keeps your sound evolving without losing its identity, and means your most frequent guests never feel the walls closing in.
Featured article
Read the report → The Retail Music Research Report
What decades of research reveal about how music shapes behaviour, dwell time, spend and brand recall across retail and hospitality, and how to put it to work in your space.
Learn
All articles → The science and art of sound in business
The Dayparting Playbook: One Venue, Many Moods
A cafe at 8am and the same cafe at 8pm are two different businesses. How to split the trading day into moods that match the room.
Read article →The Sonic Identity Playbook: Music as Brand in Hotels
Your lobby is already making a first impression in sound, whether you designed it or not. Building one identity from lobby to lift.
Read article →Questions
Do I need a Melodial Plus subscription?
Yes. Melodial Curated is an add-on for Plus subscribers. You need at least one active Plus stream to access the Curated service. Pricing is scoped with our team and is separate from your Plus subscription.
Can the playlist play across all my locations?
Yes. A single Curated playlist is available to every Plus licence in your account, all locations, all zones, at no additional cost per site. One fee, everywhere.
Can we have different music for different parts of the day?
Yes. We can produce multiple playlist variants for different parts of your trading day, for example a calmer morning set and a livelier evening set. We scope the number of variants to what your venue actually needs, and each is schedulable through your Plus dashboard.
What happens at the bimonthly refresh?
Every two months, one of our music team revisits your playlist. We retire around 10% of the tracks and replace them with fresh selections that fit the original brief. This keeps your sound evolving, your regular guests will notice it feeling fresh without ever feeling different.
Can we have input at the refresh stage?
Yes. If your brief changes, a new store concept, a seasonal shift, a rebrand, we incorporate that at the next refresh. Major changes to the brief scope may be treated as a new brief, but we approach this on a case-by-case basis.
Get started
Scoped to your brand, priced with our team.
Melodial Curated is an add-on for Plus subscribers. One playlist, built and maintained for your brand, accessible across every location and zone in your account.
Add-on to Melodial Plus
✓As much curation as your brand needs
✓Hand-selected by our music team
✓Bimonthly refresh included
✓Optional time-of-day splits
✓Access across all Plus locations
✓Brand brief session included