What a study to be part of! Tasting chocolate and listening to nice music. A European study "evaluated the perceived creaminess of chocolate. Two contrasting soundtracks were produced... and validated by means of a pre-test. The participants tasted the same chocolate twice (without knowing that the chocolates were identical), each time listening to one of the soundtracks".

Guess what? The 'creamy' soundtrack enhanced the perceived creaminess and sweetness of the chocolates, as compared to the ratings given while listening to the 'rough' soundtrack.

You can digest the study in full.

Thousands of Australian businesses realise designing the right playlist and keeping on top of new album releases to suit changing tastes is best left to the experts!

A background music supplier is a company (separate to OneMusic Australia) that creates and supplies curated music playlists and tailors them to your business type and your specific venue.

OneMusic has agreements with all background music suppliers in the country.

Some suppliers provide music on fresh CDs each month, some of them supply fresh music digitally. There are many to choose from backgroundmusicguide.com.au

Desserts up by 15%. Researchers analysed close to two million purchases at a burger chain in Sweden. When the burger stores played bespoke playlists – in this case, aimed at younger eaters – burger sales increased by 8.6%, french fries were up 8.8% and dessert sales jumped by 15.6%. 

Read more about how music makes wine taste better, makes people drink beer quicker, make diners stay longer, buy a dessert and brings in 21% more at a pub's cash register.

Forget the crowds. If you know your store is going to be crowded (think Boxing Day Sales) play up-tempo music (music with more than 107 beats per minute) and you’ll see a lift of 8% more in sales. Generally feeling crowded dampens the spending habit, but a study found people ignore this negative aspect when up-tempo music is playing. This was part of a field experiment over many months across six European retail stores and 43,000 individual shopping baskets.

At Macy’s in New York, a DJ keeps the floor pulsing with hip-hop, R&B, and reggaeton doing the one thing a compilation cannot: reading the room, cranking the music when it gets more crowded. Macy's reward? It almost goes without saying: Free-spending, bopping shoppers who say with every purchase, "I'm with the brand.” 

Some 311 bank customers took part in research when exiting their local UK city branch. Classical music such as The Four Seasons (Spring) by Vivaldi were measured against easy listening music such as Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and against no music at all over three weeks. If the music was perceived as upbeat or dynamic so was the bank, if the music was perceived as aggressive or threatening, the bank was too. Finally if the background music was felt to be dignified and inspirational, then the bank fell under the same perception.

Invigorating bar. The same type of study was conducted on a different group of 328 patrons of a UK city bar over nine days, comparing classical, British pop and no music at all. The type of music as well as the volume of the music effected the bar’s rank in the minds of it’s patrons. The more that customers perceived the music as being invigorating, the more the bar was also perceived in this way.

Synchronised listening. According to The Guardian, “a team that regularly practises with synchronised music or other acoustic stimuli will develop an instinctive sense of the team's optimal rhythm...”

“Listening to joyful music for 30 minutes has been associated with improved endothelial function, possibly by endorphin mediated activation of endothelium derived nitric oxide. The vascular health benefits of music may be due to endorphins or endorphin like compounds released from the brain when we hear music we like."

Read more about how music makes wine taste better, makes people drink beer quicker, make diners stay longer, buy a dessert and brings in 21% more at a pub's cash register.

Collective effervescence is “that glowy, giddy feeling where your sense of self slackens, yielding to a connection with your fellow, synchronized humans… Think about why people go to concerts, for instance: The sound is loud, the drinks expensive, the people sweaty, and you can hear the same songs at home. People with high tendency for… (this collective effervescence)… had more collective experiences in their lives, had more fun at them, wanted more of them, and were more likely to say they’d had such an experience recently.” The basis of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

Read more about how to encourage customers to think your business is always new and interesting.

Ambient music at work. Research suggests that ambient music could be the best kind of music for work productivity. “In 2012, The Journal of Consumer Research published a study investigating the effects of ambient noise on creativity. The study suggested that creative processes improved when participants listened to ambient noise at a moderate volume — about 70 decibels, approximately the volume of a vacuum cleaner. The study also found that creativity suffered in the presence of high-volume ambient noise — about 85 decibels, slightly louder than a garbage disposal.”

Based on results from a 2016 study happy music significantly and positively influences cooperative behaviour and there is also positive association between mood and cooperative behaviour. This builds on research from the 1970s which looked at music as an effective to raise efficiency in repetitive factory work even when in competition with the noise of machines.

Have patience. A restaurant with long lines of customers waiting may benefit by playing nostalgia-inducing background music.

Music on Hold. “Not just any music will do… certain types of music calm a person while on hold, and other types cause them to react negatively. Justin Worland of Time magazine discovered from a study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology that playing recognisable pop songs produced a more positive experience for callers than elevator music or bland, repeating melodies, which tends to frustrate callers.”

Relax, this won’t hurt a bit. With the right music patients can be more relaxed in the operating room, according to a Surgeon quoted in Time magazine. Less medication, quicker recovery times and shorter hospital stays all because music can decrease anxiety. Research in 2011 also concluded that adult dental patients may benefit from a procedural music-listening program.

Cheese that has been exposed to music for six months tastes different. In 2019 someone played music to giant rounds of cheese in Switzerland (where else?) and found that not only does music-exposed cheese taste different but the taste differs a much as the style of music.

WIRED's Peter Rubin looks at how music can change our moods, why we get the chills, and how it can actually change pathways in our brains. Watch now

90% of callers with silence on hold hang up within 40 seconds. Music on hold adds 30 seconds to the hold time.

• late.com/culture/2014/09/history-of-hold-music-how-did-we-end-up-with-handel-tinkling-through-the-telephone.html
• talkroute.com/on-hold-music-and-the-psychology-of-waiting/