What do shops have to say about piped music?

That is very well said, Buddy, and I had not realized that the number was as high. If only a small percentage of those affected by unwanted “music” in shops would write direct to the management of these companies, the shopping experience would surely improve for everyone. After all, those who cannot live without thumping trash for 45 minutes or so,may choose to have it on a personal device, but those with partial hearing cannot choose to have the quiet they need.

Like Buddy I too have a hearing impairment and, after complaining to various stores and supermarkets about the unwanted music, have come to the view that they now no longer consider the customer is `always right`. Now I have taken my trade away from the High Street and simply shop on line. Sending things back if they are not to my liking. Let the managers of these shops `enjoy` their music in their empty shops!

Empty shops will never happen you will always have people going in to shops who hate or dont hate music or dont care and for people who truly hate music just shop on line all companies do it you will get the silance and the products you want.

Chris – If I know exactly what I want to buy, I’m happy to shop online. If I don’t, I find it very helpful to inspect goods. With household goods, many look at aesthetics but I focus more on build quality. Often I can spot plastic parts that might break easily, goods that would be difficult to use or keep clean, and numerous other things that might affect my choice. In clothes shops I can inspect the quality of the materials and the quality of the workmanship. I cannot do that online and often the information I want to know is not provided on a website.

The original conversation was not hard to find doing a search in a normal search engine. It came straight up with it. But it was hard to find doing a search for piped music in Which?’s own in site search. Which? should keep it going and make it easier to find as it would be a shame to lose all those interesting and well thought out comments. All effort gone to waste.

As a deaf person I feel very strongly about this and think that a conversation with a greater number of comments tells those in charge how important this subject is to many people, especially the deaf or those with health problems made worse by unnecessary noise.

Which? should break with their usual convention and keep the old conversation going.

Buddy – If you have a look at the other Conversation you will see that we are discussing the Disability Discrimination Act. We need people with hearing problems, like yourself, to push for action. Companies and other organisations can tell the rest of us that many like the music, but it would be very foolish to ignore those who have genuine disabilities.

Much of the discussion so far has focused on personal preferences, polls and people wanting to persuade companies of what could improve their sales. Supporting the disabled and those employees who are obliged to listen to music all day and every day is far more important. In fact discussing polls is just detracting from the more important issues.

I don’t know what your knowledge of the rest of the world is like – I can tell you that in the U.S. the customer is always right, and complaints result in action. In France, “background” music is rare since people actually enjoy the civilized aspects of shopping. It is in fact only in the UK that one is subjected to loud pop just about everywhere.

[This comment has been tweaked to align with our commenting guidelines. Thanks, mods]

Campaigning against unnecessary background music in public places is certainly not limited to this country, Bill. There are noise abatement groups worldwide and these often include a section against muzak. Germany even has its own version of Pipedown http://www.pipedown.de/

Catherine, my understanding is that hospital treatment areas (including hospital wards) are exempt from having to pay for a music licence. However, they do have to pay for PRS for Music/PPL licences in NHS waiting areas. In Scotland alone the Health Boards are paying thousands of pounds of NHS money on these licences (and this doesn’t include GPs’ waiting rooms). The problem is that the music industry has convinced even the medical profession that background music is relaxing. It is only relaxing if you like the choice of music and actually want to listen to it at that time. Otherwise it can have the opposite effect.

Our local Quiet Edinburgh site http://www.quietedinburgh.co.uk/ is doing its best to highlight muzac-free venues in the Scottish capital. Unfortunately, you are right in saying that many of the “quiet” restaurants are in museums and art galleries. However, we are gradually adding more independent venues thanks to people notifying us. Please let us know if you come across any venues not already on our list.

Finally, I see that muzac-free Primark has just reported an 11% rise in profits. Yet more proof that spending large amounts of money on music licences has nothing to do with improved sales (and, judging by this conversation, might actually have the opposite effect)

That is a disappointing response but we certainly do need people who are suffering to come forward and push for action. Shops etc. are not obliged to pay any attention to whether or not we like music but they should not be ignoring the needs of disabled people or their employees.

I’m not sure how many premises have music so loud that it could cause hearing damage. If that was a problem it could be reported to HSE.

I doubt any retail premises would knowingly broadcast music above 80dB!

As for disappointment, it is a bit surprising that Action on Hearing Loss know of no relevant research (I was going to contact Hearing Research UK but find they have merged with Action on Hearing Loss). This may, of course, be because there have not been significant problems reported. Their role is to look after the interests of hearing-impaired people so had they been aware of problems I’d expect them to have followed them up – unless those in contact with me do not know what is going on.

I have been in touch with Hearing Link with the same questions. I have had a pleasant but not very helpful reply; suggestions such as asking for the volume to be lowered and writing to the bosses. I have asked if I might quote part of the response, but I have had no reply to that. It seems that the hearing loss organisations are not going to be much help.

I am encouraged by that reply, Malcolm. I wrote to Action on Hearing Loss a couple of years ago about access for people with a hearing impairment to restaurants playing loud background music and at that time they said that it was something they hadn’t really studied. The fact that they are now saying they are planning to explore the accessibility of cafes, bars and restaurants in the near future with their research panel sounds promising.

Have you tried writing to the MRC Institute of Hearing Research with your initial inquiry? They might know if any research is going on in this area. I came across a report that low frequency sounds can damage our hearing. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/09/sounds-you-cant-hear-can-still-hurt-your-ears Don’t know if this is relevant to our argument about non-stop background music!

Dorothy, thanks for the lead. I have now contacted them.

Malcolm – It might be worth looking at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, though I’m not sure that this engages directly with the public.

Having looked further into the scientific literature I’m beginning to think that there has not been much research to investigate the problems of exposure to music. 🙁

wavechange – I have contacted MRC but no reply yet.

Re Malcolm’s earlier response from Action on Hearing Loss…I now have contact details for a member of staff at Action on Hearing Loss who is in the process of “formulating a survey which we want to use to get café’s and bars to understand the problems background noise has to people with a hearing loss”

I know Which? commenting guidelines don’t let us post personal e-mail addresses but, if you contact me via our Quiet Edinburgh website, I am happy to pass on details to anyone who wants to help Action on Hearing Loss.

Apologies for wandering from shops again, Patrick!

That’s disappointing, Malcolm, but thanks for trying. I rather doubt that music in shops approaches the sound levels that are likely to cause hearing damage. My own investigation of the scientific literature has found numerous references to the beneficial effect of music, even for those who find problems with loud noise.

Apart from loss of high frequency hearing typical of males which I have followed over the years with a signal generator, my hearing is OK, yet since I was in my teens I have found it difficult to have a conversation at social events where others cope well. Likewise, I find it difficult to focus on reading, crosswords and mental arithmetic with music at a comfortable listening level, and trying to concentrate becomes stressful. I am certainly not alone, in being able to concentrate while listening to music. Nevertheless, I have not been able to track down scientific reviews or primary literature about the negative effects of music and my guess is that research has not been carried out, or done but not published.

I did speak to a friend who is a disabilities officer and has had to cope with students with autism, but have not got anything useful to report.

Since we started to discuss music in shops, I have noticed it becoming more common. It’s not loud and I can cope with it, but I do feel sorry for those with serious hearing difficulties, and those staff who have to put up with it all day, every day.

If there are any useful scientific papers it is easy to check for more recent articles that cite the earlier work.

Thank you for sharing your reply, Malcolm. Last year I went to a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival by one of the research staff at the Scottish branch of the Institute of Hearing Research. One of the exercises he gave the audience was to pick out numbers from 1-10 which were read out against what he called “pink noise”. The numbers gradually became louder and the audience had to indicate when they became audible. Afterwards I wrote to him to ask if he ever did this type of experiment with background vocal music, rather than pink noise. I explained that I find vocal music is particularly intrusive when you are trying to have a conversation. It is also intrusive if you are trying to read, for example in a bookshop or in a card shop. I don’t seem to be able to cope with two lots of “vocals” at once.

This was his reply: “What you are experiencing with overlapping conversations and vocal music is what we call ‘informational masking.’ That is, apart from overlapping spectrums (that result in ‘energetic masking’, i.e., energetic vibration in the same parts of the cochlea) there is information content in the noise you are trying to ignore and this makes it hard to follow the information in what you are trying to listen to. We definitely study this kind of noise interferer – we use pink noise (like in the demos at the Science Festival), white noise, and speech-shaped noise, but we also use speech, multi-talker babble, amplitude modulated noises, and all sorts of realistic background sounds.

As a general rule, the more complex the noise is and the more information it contains, the harder it is to understand simultaneous speech and the less benefit people get from making the noise quieter. The worst case scenario, really, is multi-talker babble plus loud vocal music, just as you described. It probably all comes down to having a finite amount of attention that one can allocate. A second (third, or fourth) conversation requires you to pay greater attention so that you can deliberately ignore words that you can clearly hear!”

Perhaps this explains why so many of us find vocal, rather than instrumental, music in shops and restaurants so difficult to tolerate.

Dorothy, interesting that they seem to be doing research into the way background noise affects our hearing. Pity they don’t publicise it more in relation to the incessant piped music we have to endure!

Thanks very much for sharing that response, Dorothy. I found it very helpful because it explains why I have a slight problem in shops with background vocal music. I actually have very good hearing and can hear low-level speech and other sounds very well over considerable distances. I can also hear well across a very wide cross-sectional area. I thought I just had bad tuning ability because I was unable to screen out the unwanted sounds and my left and right ears were competing against each other to receive all the available sound. It is the mental processing of those conflicting sources that gives rise to the minor discomfort in my case but in an acute or prolonged form would probably induce stress. The “informational masking” described by your IHR correspondent makes a lot of sense. It is not my ears or my sensitivity that is the problem but the overlapping information content that I am struggling to decipher, categorise and either receive or reject as appropriate. I must admit, when listening to harmonic music unaccompanied by voice patterns I have absolutely no discomort and actually find it quite pleasurable even if the type of music would not be my favourite. This might explain the scientific evidence on the beneficial effects of background music reported by Wavechange.

Thank you Malcolm for sharing the reply from the MRC. Not surprisingly, it focusses more on the potential of background music to cause harm to normal-hearing people than on any temporary harmful effect on people already suffering from a hearing disability. People with existing hearing loss could, under the “informational masking” explanation from the IHR, experience substantial aggravation of their hearing disability and this might be exacerbated if using a hearing aid. Such people will not just experience discomfort but suffer from real stress as they try to process the two [or more] streams of information – one essential, the other[s] to be ignored but which cannot be ignored until processed in conflict with the essential sound. There are millions of people with varying degrees of hearing impairment who must genuinely be suffering when forced to unscramble speech from simultaneous singing; in the most sensitive cases the effort must be leading to some anxiety compounding the stress. There does not [yet] appear to be any evidence that retailers are giving any thought to these issues and I doubt if a single risk assessment has ever been produced in connexion with the playing of sing-song in shops.

I feel enormous sympathy for Tumour who tells us above about pain experienced in shops with background music and cannot even go into them because of the effect on him or her. I doubt whether playing only music without vocals would make much difference in his or her case but it shows that disability comes in many forms not always obvious and that if we are to aspire to being a civilised and caring society there is a long way to go, even by those companies are conscientious but possibly not sufficiently well-informed.

Incidentally, while the Health & Safety At Work etc Act and its derivatives might appear to concern only employees, the management of health and safety at work [under various regulations] is supposed to consider all potential hazards including to members of the public invited to be or present on the employer’s premises or at risk from its operations wherever they take place.

Dorothy and John, I find it very surprising that no formal research appears to have been done, or at least reported, on what I would have thought was a fundamental problem for people with defective hearing – how to maximise the clarity of hearing when there is background noise – whether music, vocals or anything else. I wonder if those who design hearing aids have anything to contribute?

Given the enormous amount of technological and acoustic engineering effort being put into the manufacture of ever more sophisticated noise-cancelling headphones, I feel sure there is a practical solution out there; maybe the will to discover and develop it is lacking.

Malcolm, I’m not sure there is much they can do at the moment. My second question to the academic at the Institute of Hearing Research was about recruitment. I had only recently come across this condition (whereby, because of the aging ear, older people hear the lower registers more loudly and so are particularly affected by the “thudding” beats of background pop music). This was his response:

“loudness recruitment is a real problem. It’s what makes building hearing aids so difficult: you can’t just amplify everything because it quickly becomes painful to listen to. You have to use compressors that ensure that quiet sounds are made louder, but loud sounds are not. Then the compressors in turn cause problems with hearing speech in noise. This makes it a bit of an intractable problem at the moment. Until we can address the more fundamental causes of hearing impairment (by regrowing hair cells or remapping the auditory brain, for example), we’re stuck with recruitment!”

I don’t wear a hearing aid but I have been shopping with friends who do and who sometimes have to switch off the aid because the music is so loud as to be unbearable. Then they can’t have a conversation with their friends. I honestly don’t think shops have any idea how widespread this problem is.

Dorothy, I have found the British Hearing Aid Manufacturers’ Association. Like John says we are so clever with electronics these days maybe they have approached this problem. I’ll see if they have anything to say.

Interested to read that you could find only references to the benficial effects of music, wavechange. I have genuinely struggled to find articles suggesting that background music is beneficial, apart from those commissioned by or sonsored by the music industry. The only impartial research I have come across is that which comes with a proviso that to be beneficial the music has to be self-selected. More than one article states that surgeons claim they work better to a background of piped music. However, this is music they have chosen. It might not be what the rest of the operating team wants!

Sorry Dave. I should have said that I only noticed scientific articles on the beneficial effects of music. I did not look at the context. I don’t think this means that there are no negative effect, just that they either have not been studied or reported.

I have the top of the range Bose noise cancelling headphones but unfortunately they can’t keep out the rubbish music from stores like B&Q .

That might explain why many of the customers going in those shops seem to be wearing hoodies. Or is it the other way round?

Always amazes me how ingrained this perception is. Hopefully the Which? conversations have illustrated that a large proportion of us don’t ‘just love’ the music.

If you include people who don’t mind piped music the poll showed 48% against, 52% for or don’t mind. But I think if you want a poll it needs to be a much larger and more representative group. However I don’t think this is an issue that a poll would solve; it is down to discussing views with individual shops or groups – if there is no H&S problem then it is their commercial decision.

You could re-phrase that, Malcolm, and say that 60% either dislike background music in shops or are indifferent to it, and only 40% like it. I agree with you that this should be a commercial decision and, as such, we can’t really interfere with it. However, I can’t help wondering just how informed this decision usually is. When you ask companies what research they have done as to whether or not their customers like background music they often admit that they have done no research at all. Those who do mention research often quote statistics produced by the music industry. In view of the fact that some of the most successful businesses don’t play music, I still have to be convinced that there is a sound commercial basis for playing it.

Dave, exactly! I took it that those who didn’t mind had no objection to it. I was just pointing out the closeness of this particular poll. At present information from experts has either not been presented or is not available. I have tried to get some facts and recently have emailed the hearing aids manufacturers association to see if they can add anything to the discussion; no response to date. So presently it does just come down to commercial decisions by the perpetrators

Dax, I agree that the poll probably isn’t accurate but I am pleasantly surprised at the number of respondents who are saying that they dislike music in shops. I always thought that more older people dislike it than younger people (partly because older people hear it more loudly anyway). Older people have been shown to be far less active on social media than younger people. I know so many older people who never use Facebook, let alone Twitter, or who don’t even possess a computer. And yet they hate backgound music is shops and restaurants. Their views are never going to be recorded on internet sites. The fact that so many people are saying here that they dislike background music, or are indifferent, is very encouraging.

In fact other polls have come up with similar results. Don’t believe what the people who supply piped music claim from their dodgy “research”. Most people don’t like it and it doesn’t increase sales.

It isn’t a numbers game. Spare a thought for those with hearing problems.

Assuming you have a mobile phone, you can have whatever music you like.

Chris, you’re missing the point. This isn’t about whether some like music or not. Think of this as smoking. Second hand smoke is harmful, so it is banned in public. It has nothing to do with democracy because the majority don’t smoke. It is about freedom from being slowly poisoned by secondhand smoke inhalation.

Similarly with ‘piped music’. The fact is that many of us hate it, find it distracting and makes using shops or pubs unpleasant. So as with smoking, if you want to listen to music, keep it personal and listen to your own music wearing ear buds whilst in public. Keep it to yourself in public, play it as loudly as you like in your home or car. Is that asking too much?

Puzzled that you think it is a choice between music and silence, chris. Primark doesn’t play music but it is never silent when I go in. Nor is John Lewis. Nor is Wetherspoons. I hear the sound of fellow shoppers in these places, never silence.

I’m pleased to see that the manufacturers association will be talking to Action on Hearing Loss formerly RNID]. I didn’t get the impression from my earlier attempts to discover AHL’s position on background music in shops etc that it was of much concern to them. I had rather hoped that they would have been following this Conversation with keen interest and it will be good if an approach from HAMA demonstrates the concern that the wider community has for the difficulties experienced by hearing aid users as well as people with partial hearing for whom distracting and conflicting sound sources can be stressful and even painful in some cases.

Don’t think this is “a small bunch of people who hate music”, Bill. On the contrary, I think it has been made clear throughout all these “noisy shops/restaurants” conversations that the people complaining are people who love music but hate having it used this way as background noise. Far from a “small bunch”, the Which? poll seems to have balanced out as 48/49% disliking music in shops and only 38/39% liking it. Not everyone has the choices you suggest. If there isn’t a John Lewis available, often the only choices for department stores are House of Fraser and Debenhams, both of which play loud music. Other high street stores, such as M&S and BHS, play background music. In rural areas the only supermarket is often the Co-op, which was one of the top three in the recent “which shops play the most annoying background music?” conversation. Still can’t understand why people who want to listen to music as they shop cant provide it for themselves through personal music players.

Bill

I don’t hate pasta, but I like to eat it when I choose, cooked the way I like and the amount I want. I would object to being force fed pasta, I would resent being told I must eat pasta made to a certain recipe with ingredients that I didn’t like and bullied into eating more than I wanted.

It’s a matter of choice, not a question of not liking music. Choice regarding when we listen to music, what kind of music and how loud it is.

People with a hearing impairment have even more serious choices taken away from them; if they can’t hear against the background noise, they are denied the right to have a conversation with their companions. When there is music, people talk louder so the din just escalates.

Anyway, as has been said before, the ambience of shops is not for the benefit of the staff but for the comfort and sociability of the customers a good number of whom are pained by background music. Turning Bill’s argument around, staff who don’t like quiet shops can get a job elsewhere.

Not so easy, John. I have a daughter who works in Morrisons. She likes her colleagues and job but hates the music. Where does she move to? Jobs aren’t falling off trees, whatever impression the govt likes to give. In the same way you say that staff who don’t like quiet shops can get a job elsewhere. Where exactly? Most supermarket job vacancies now are on part-time hours.

Thank you Sally. I was trying to demonstrate what an objectionable argument is being put up by those shop staff who want to keep the music playing despite the evidence that customers prefer no music and are actually distressed by it

Your daughter’s position shows all the more reason why music should not be played in shops. I feel very sorry for staff who have been forced to put up with this noise all day long. It has become so pervasive across the retail sector that it is now virtually unavoidable in many parts of the country. For many people it is intolerable. However, there is a vocal group of retail employees who oppose moves to curtail ‘background’ music in shops because they happen to like it, whereas the majority of customers don’t. Their response to the campaign is to say that people who don’t like the music should shop elsewhere which in my view is an insult to the providers of their bread & butter. If they can’t stand a quiet retail environment then I think they are in the wrong job but this Conversation is not about what staff want, although it’s interesting to hear their point of view. There are thousands of employees like your daughter who don’t like the music, or might be adversely affected by it, but who have no redress because their managers blindly follow corporate policy. The lack of music never harmed anyone but there is ample evidence that many customers are suffering discomfort and in some cases pain. I don’t know how any decent retail employee from shelf-stacker to company director can condone, let alone support, the continuation of that state of affairs, especially since they can present no credible justification for the policy.

The lack of any suitable alternative jobs in many areas is another reason why the dictatorial imposition of unwanted music is so offensive.

I agree that it’s offesnive and insulting to insist on piped music.
The word to descibe staff demanding to keep piped music is : SELFISH. If even one person dislikes the background music they should turn it off. I often ask (politely) for the music to be turned down and 80% of the time the staff will do it (though in some shops such as Boots they can’t).

Completely agree. People should have the choice. As I said to the B&Q employee (B&Q music is especially bad) I wouldn’t expect top go into HMV and have a tin of paint shoved up my backside so why do I have to listen to your (very bad) music. He and I had a good laugh and I left on good terms but without buying anything .

I agree – most people don’t want to hear music in a shop (or restaurant). Other polls have come up with similar resuts.
But if even one person found it annoying or unpelasant that should be reason enough to get rid of it. Think of it as the equiavent of passive smoking – bad for your health.

Really annoying (and moronic) and not a good use of taxpayer’s money.