The Single Playlist Solution
Most businesses play a single music mix throughout the entire day. That mix can have a lot of variety of artists with loads of songs so it sounds good all day. It’s one channel, one playlist, that’s heard at 10am or 10pm, from open til close. This works well because once a business has arrived at an “ideal sound” there’s no reason to wander away from that. Great! For most businesses, one channel (some would call it one playlist) through the workday fits perfectly for the employees, the customers, and the brand.
When One Playlist Isn’t Enough
Then there are some businesses where the feeling or the vibe can change significantly through the day. The mood (attitude, expectation) of the customer and the mood of the brand shifts with people’s lifestyle and activities. So, the soundtrack for that business might need to evolve throughout the day. We call this “dayparting”. Dayparting is making music adjustments at different benchmark hours to adjust and target the sound for the time of day.
A typical example of dayparting is at restaurants. Breakfast music can have a lighter tone for the morning. In the midday lunch hours, the tempo and attitude pick up by playing different artists and different titles. Happy hour can be more fun and upbeat than earlier in the day. And nights can be newer, modern, higher tempo – or perhaps even slower, laid back and chill for nighttime.
Examples of Dayparting
One of our salon/barbershop clients has a “Happy Hour Friday” where the music becomes a party mix every Friday afternoon and evening. For another retailer we created a simple dayparted solution. It’s a daytime mix targeted to a slightly older customer and nighttime mix targeted younger. It’s not a radical departure but enough where one playlist all day wouldn’t suffice. Another restaurant client plays pop and rock all week then switches to jazz and standards for Sunday brunch.
We typically don’t see totally different sounds with dayparting, like classical mornings, classic rock middays, and hip hop at night. However, there may be a brand that’s able to pull that off. Dayparting is more about adding and subtracting songs and artists from a core sound and style. So, the main library of music doesn’t radically change. The playlist evolves and shifts around a central sound that reflects the brand’s sound. A basic dayparting example might be to have 50% of the songs play all day (the core sound of the brand). Then, have 50% of the songs change based on the time of day (the songs that are a better fit for mood/tempo at the time).
Dayparting Music Helps Relate to the Customers in Each Part of the Day
Our ReMix and Ethos platforms are designed for optimum daypart matching. ReMix (you mix it) allows the user to create multiple playlists and schedule those playlists for different days and time. Ethos, our premium service with our music programmer working directly with you, uses sophisticated music scheduling software along with our in-house expert’s curation to blend playlists and dayparts into one channel.
Ask us about how dayparting the music might benefit your brand and better appeal to your customers and employees.