The musicalization and the roles of music in service environments

Music in service environments exists because of two main factors: the first relies on the common understanding that music composes the ambient and may have the environment’s customers calm and relaxed, and the other relies on the commercial character of music. Both

factors contributed to the appearance of the music-in-marketing agencies that offer the musicalization for service environments. The first factor is confronted by the theory that brings different functionalities for music in service places other than relaxing customers and composing the ambient; the second is not discussed in the literature yet seems to be relevant for the comprehension of the roles of music in the service environments.

As composing the service environment with all the possible ambient elements (e.g., temperature, visual, music, and others) is seen as necessary for generating well-being; as it is believed that well-being generates good experiences that, in turn, may have customers either staying longer or returning to the service environments, the service-place enterprises assume the presence of music in their environments. Although other reasons could be posited to justify the usage of music in service environments (influence on customer attitudes and desires, for instance), the music is generally linked to well-being and stay duration, and is defined as “ambient music”.

The comprehension of the positive effects music might have on service environments had already been brought by the study of Smith and Curnow (1966) as well as by the ones of Ballouli (2011), Gorn (1982), Kellaris and Kent (1992), and Milliman (1982). Their comprehension went beyond the functionality of relaxing customers, though, going through promoting customers’ outcomes (such as arousal), communicating brands, and mediating the time perception. These studies highlight that the “relaxing functionality” is only one of the functionalities music may have in service places, yet in the interviews, it is the role that appears the most to characterize music as an ambient tool for well-being.

(…) In a more relaxed environment, people get more comfortable and live a happier moment at that place, and this happiness is what we seek for, right? Any happier moment we have, we tend to repeat. So, by the marketing logic, it makes customers get back to our locals… (N.I)

The other factor relies on the commercial character of music: music is an artistic product that requires the recognition of its author rights, which means that music cannot be played at a store, for instance, without having the author rights controlled. So, for service environments to have music being played in their environments, it is necessary to pay for the author rights of all music selected for their playlists. Moreover, it is explained that this control is done by ECAD (the central office of music distribution in Brazil), which is mentioned to be a non-transparent or unfair institution, resulting in expensive and “senseless” fees to be paid:

There is another barrier, ECAD, which is a very sad thing. By that, the service environment has to pay ECAD besides paying the musicalization service for music to be used in its store. But ECAD, as people know, does not transfer this money to all artists that are being played in the stores. They pay for the 50-most played artists of the associated radios. It is unacceptable, right? (R.B)

Better to say, as the service environments need to have music being played in their environments (based on the well-being-generator reason), they demand an ECAD-free ambient music or a provider that might mediate this relation between service places or, at least, facilitate this bureaucracy. By this, the musicalization agencies come to the business reality. Herein, music appears to be not the main commercialized good but an element of the musicalization service that is based on the offering of ECAD-free playlists among other music-related services such as musical content for social networks, jingles, and others.

It is important to mention that this (commercial) characteristic of music is not brought by the literature. There is no academic discussion about music being commercialized for service-environment purposes and the impact this characteristic may have on the other ones (being a sound and being an inspiration). The point is that the practice of commercializing music is attached to the control of authors’ rights, and along with the service places’ demand for music, derives the musicalization service/offer.

Figure 12: The relation between the music roles Source: Developed by the author of this thesis

In other words, as it can be seen in the figure above, the general understanding that the service-place enterprises have that music is necessary to compose their environments with the commercial character of music gives chances for the musicalization service to be offered by the musicalization providers. Moreover, it is the musicalization dynamic that characterizes the music as a commodity product, which may determine the limitations of the roles music plays not only as a sound but also as inspiration. That is to say, based on how the market behaves in terms of seeing music as a marketing tool, the roles of music in service environments may be deepened and expanded.