Music that Matches Your Coffee Shop

When you visit your local coffee shop, there is no doubt that you will observe several customers wearing ear buds to listen to their favorite music while they work or read.

When we launched our first coffee shop, I was naïve to think I could plug in Pandora or Spotify lists and people would thank me for providing a great playlist.

Little did I know that I needed a commercial music service. One of my employees shared with me that the law requires commercial establishments to use systems that pay royalties to songwriters or to use royalty-free music or live radio stations. And so began my ‘education’.  Someone once said that if you look at your mistakes as tuition, it is easier to accept the costs if you learn from them. I hope you can learn from our ‘tuition’ and save some sunk costs.

Don’t skip over the importance of selecting music that matches your coffee shop style – or the source of that music! In our first coffee shop, we didn’t make enough profit to afford even the low-cost commercial options. Instead, we chose to go the route of streaming the royalty-free jazz or classical music option from Public Domain Radio.

In our second coffee shop, we wanted to set a particular vibe. One of our team members researched and tested several well-known commercial streaming companies. She found that only one company, called Jukeboxy, would allow us to create a Spotify list, import that music into our system, and allow us to play our playlist to set the vibe for our coffee shop.

We bought their Jukeboxy player, connected it to our sound system at our coffee shops, and we found that our customers often ask “Where did you find this great playlist?”  We highly recommend using Jukeboxy to set the tone that matches your coffee shop.

If you want to play our particular vibe, search Spotify for HOPE Coffee Playlist and import it into your Jukeboxy account by emailing their team.