Retail Music ROI: 150,000 Shopping Trips of Evidence (and What They Cost You in Licences)

A 2023 Journal of Marketing Research study of 150,000 shopping trips found in-store music lifts weekday spend by over 10% — and 54% of shoppers have walked out of a store over bad music. Here's the retail evidence, plus what international retailers pay local PRO licensing. VibeBeats is direct-licensed background music for cafés, restaurants, bars, gyms, retail stores, salons, spas, clinics and hotels. No music licensing/PRO fees (*No OneMusic, ASCAP, BMI, PPL PRS or SOCAN licence needed for VibeBeats music.) Other music sources may still require licensing. The AI DJ reshapes each playlist through the trading day.

Retail music research has a lot of loose numbers attached to it. This post sticks to the studies you could hand to a CFO.

The headline: 150,000 shopping trips

Ahlbom, Roggeveen, Grewal and Nordfält published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2023 what is now the most rigorous field study of in-store music: roughly 150,000 shopping trips across a Swedish supermarket chain, with music switched on and off as the experimental variable.

The result: in-store music lifted weekday spend by more than 10%. And then the nuance that makes the paper genuinely useful — the effect disappeared, and in places reversed, on weekends, when stores were crowded. Music adds stimulation; a crowded store already has plenty.

Read carelessly, that's an argument against music. Read properly, it's the strongest argument going for scheduling: music ROI is context-dependent, so the right setting on a quiet Tuesday morning is the wrong setting during a Saturday rush. Fixed playlists can't express that. Dayparted, footfall-aware programming can.

The classics

• Milliman, 1982 (Journal of Marketing): slow-tempo supermarket music slowed shopper traffic flow and lifted daily sales roughly 38% versus fast tempo. Landmark study — and a single store in 1982. Frame it as the paper that started the field. • Areni & Kim, 1993: classical music in a wine store led shoppers to buy more expensive bottles at the same volume. Premiumisation, not units. • Yalch & Spangenberg, 2000: shoppers exposed to unfamiliar music actually shopped longer, while believing they'd shopped longer with familiar music. Customer intuition about music is unreliable. • North, Hargreaves & McKendrick, 1997/1999: the wine-aisle study — French music days saw French wine outsell German roughly 5:1; German music days flipped it roughly 2:1. Around 85% of shoppers denied the music influenced them.

Our older post on how music increases retail conversion makes a bolder headline claim than we'd stand behind today; treat this post as the rigorous version and that one as the introduction.

What shoppers report

Survey data, attributed as such:

• 54% have left a store because the music was too loud; 24% over explicit lyrics; and 36% say no music makes shopping worse (Cloud Cover Music survey, 2019, n=1,012). • 84% of US shoppers say music improves the shopping experience (Mood Media, "State of Brick & Mortar", 2017, n=11,000+ across nine countries). • 90% are more likely to revisit stores that get music, visuals and scent right, while 57% disengage when the music is poor (Mood Media global sensory study, 2019). • 66% of shoppers believe music influences their buying habits (PPL PRS survey, 2021 — a licensing body). • 41% spent more than planned when the music aligned with the brand (EU Music 360 Living Labs, 2024, published 2025).

For the practical version of all this, see how to choose background music for a retail store and the retail store music features that actually matter.

The cost of silence — and the cost of wrong

HUI Research's 2017 study across 16 quick-service locations and 1.8 million transactions (commissioned by Soundtrack Your Brand, run independently by HUI) found brand-fit music lifted sales 9.1% against random hits, while a poorly fitting mix performed 4.3% worse than silence. The lesson transfers cleanly to retail: bad music isn't a neutral choice, it's a negative one.

There's a staff dimension too. 93% of employees say they prefer music to silence at work (Mood Media × Sacem, 2017). In a sector fighting retail turnover, the people standing in your store for eight hours have a vote worth counting.

The cost side: local PRO licensing retail rates

international retailers are charged by floor area and source tier. Gold covers streaming and commercial suppliers; Bronze covers radio and TV only.

local PRO licensing retail rates, 2026–27 licence year, GST inclusive:

— Tier — Starting annual fee (1–50 m²) — — --- — --- — — Gold (streaming / commercial supplier) — from the current tariff (confirm on onemusic.com.au) — — Silver (commercial supplier) — from the current tariff (confirm on onemusic.com.au) — — Bronze (radio / TV only) — from the current tariff (confirm on onemusic.com.au) —

Fees scale with floor area, and multi-site retailers multiply the fee per premises — so a ten-store chain in the smallest Gold band is already looking at over the current tariff (confirm on onemusic.com.au) a year before anyone has paid for the music itself. Source: the local PRO licensing Retail licence guide. Rates index annually.

The VibeBeats equation

VibeBeats licenses its catalogue directly from artists and rights holders. For recorded background music, that removes the local PRO licensing and local composition PRO fee entirely — the licence is included, with plans from $29/month, multi-zone scheduling and brand-fit curation.

That last point is the one the 2023 JMR study makes for us: whether music pays in retail depends on fit and timing. Those are exactly the two variables a scheduling platform controls and a Bluetooth speaker doesn't.

The standard caveats:

• Live performance and in-store events using commercial catalogues still need collecting-society licensing. Our direct licence covers VibeBeats recorded music only. • One radio, TV or staff Spotify session re-triggers the licence obligation for the whole premises. • Consumer streaming prohibits commercial use in its own terms — see using Spotify in an international shop — and a licence doesn't fix that breach.

For smaller operators, AI music for small retail stores covers the single-site version of this decision.

What to do with this

Schedule by daypart and by footfall, not by taste. Get the fit right before you touch the volume. And check whether you're paying a licence fee for music that could arrive licensed.

Start a free trial or book a live demo at app.vibebeats.ai/demo.

Sources

• Ahlbom, C.-P., Roggeveen, A., Grewal, D. & Nordfält, J. (2023). Journal of Marketing Research: https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/in-store-music-makes-supermarket-shoppers-spend-more-but-only-on-weekdays/ • Milliman, R. (1982). Journal of Marketing. • Areni, C. & Kim, D. (1993). Advances in Consumer Research. • Yalch, R. & Spangenberg, E. (2000). Journal of Business Research. • North, A., Hargreaves, D. & McKendrick, J. (1997/1999). • Cloud Cover Music survey (2019, n=1,012). • Mood Media, "State of Brick & Mortar" (2017, n=11,000+); Mood Media global sensory study (2019); Mood Media × Sacem (2017). • PPL PRS / Perspectus Global survey (2021): https://pplprs.co.uk/benefitsmusic/how-can-music-influence-consumer-behaviour/ • EU Music 360 Living Labs (2024/2025): https://music-360.eu/2025/02/03/music-in-retail/ • HUI Research / Soundtrack Your Brand (2017): https://www.qsrmagazine.com/sponsored_content/study-shows-brand-fit-music-lifts-sales-9-percent/ • local PRO licensing — Retail licence guide (2026–27 rates): https://local PRO licensing.com.au/licences/retail/

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