In a resounding victory for all of you who didn’t pipe down about your distaste for piped music, M&S is scrapping piped music in its stores. Question is – will other retailers follow suit?
Music in shops is a well known pet peeve for many Which? Convo commenters. In fact, over the past few years thousands of you have told us how piped music has ruined your shopping experience, and driven you out of shops.
Well, with thanks to Dorothy who shared this with us, it would seem that the powers that be at M&S have agreed with this sentiment and have scrapped piped music.
A spokesman from M&S told us:
‘We’re focused on putting the customer at the heart of everything we do, this decision is the result of extensive research and feedback from our customers and colleagues’
Hooray – I hear you say – and a victory for those Convo commenters and of course the Pipedown campaign.
Peace and quiet
High streets across the country are currently (unless you’re reading this in the dead of the night) piping out a cacophony of muzak into their stores.
According to an investigation recently carried out by the Daily Mail there are some high street shops out there that are piping out music at 83.8dB – the sort of sound levels you’d find in a crowded bar where you can just about hear the person next to you talking. It hardly makes for a pleasurable shopping experience.
The experience can be far from pleasurable for some. Like Hilary, for example, who told us:
I have recently had to make speedy exits from several retail outlets as I could not concentrate on what I was looking for due to the volume and type of music being forced upon me.
And I can more than sympathise with those of you who told us how piped music drove you straight out of some shops. Harking back to the days of my Saturday job, if it wasn’t torturous enough to be in an airless spotlit shop, the added ‘easy listening’ tunes piped out on loop made it all the more unbearable.
Shush the shops
But at least the shop I worked in played ‘easy listening’ music. There are some shops that may as well be nightclubs.
Now if M&S has been so bold as to scrap piped music from their stores, which other retailers would you like to see follow suit?
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