Pairing the Playlist with Your Restaurant’s Atmosphere

Barbara Castiglia

February 25, 2021

Barbara Castiglia

Barbara Castiglia Podcast

brand soundtracks

music

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Food is serious business. Now, on The Main Course, host Barbara Castiglia will invite insiders on the front lines of food to share their expertise, strategies, and forecasts for navigating the ever-changing restaurant industry.

The Main Course offers listeners lots of sensory experiences, though, most of the time, it’s all about taste and smell. Now, the podcast takes on sound. Host Barbara Castiglia spoke with Ola Sars, founder of Soundtrack Your Brand, the only global music streaming service for business.

Sars has a fascinating background in the music streaming industry. He was a co-founder of Beats Music and Spotify Business. He started the conversation with this candid take. “Music is an amazing art form. It’s an enabler of brands [looking] to augment experiences, connect to customers and make people feel great.”

Bringing Soundtrack Your Brand to market was led by this passion, but it also solved a business concern—compliance. There was no legal streaming service for restaurants or stores. That’s just the first part; the second is driving companies to develop a soundtrack that translates all their brand sentiments.

Castiglia and Sars talked about a research project that measured the difference between four different music treatments. Two were curations from Soundtrack Your Brand (one with popular music and another that mixed that with lesser-known tracks); one was their current legacy provider of well-known hits, and one was silence.

“The comparison between their current music and the brand application of mixed hits showed a 9.1% top-line sales improvement with the latter. Silence was even better than their current solution,” Sars said.

Sars also offered tips to restaurants on translating their brand to music. “First, have a solid concept, then work on the soundtrack.”

That’s easy to do with the company’s software. Users can feed inputs around artists, feelings, or specific songs, and its AI and machine learning engine kicks into gear. Sars recommends blending music and not focusing on hits, as they can be distracting. He also cautioned against repetition, as it can have a negative impact.