Music to Soothe--or Release--the Savage Beast

It’s hard to dampen the urge to boogie--even hundreds of feet below the ocean.

There, in the crushing depths, the Navy has begun providing its submariners with music fitted to their tastes. The underwater music mix of rock and spiritual, break and country is “demographically programmed” by a Seattle-based company specializing in what may be the 1980s answer to Muzak, the background music used primarily to promote productivity in offices and factories.

Designed to Be Heard

The submarine crews are an extreme example of the use of “foreground music.” This is not the barely audible music designed to take the peaks off stress levels and increase concentration. It’s designed to be heard. And this flip-side of background music is being touted as an almost miraculous marketing tool, a sort of musical key to consumers’ psyches.

Whether they realize it or not, about 6 million-plus Americans already are getting an earful of this up-front answer to subliminal sound every day. Merchants, restaurateurs, dentists and airline managers--to name a few--are betting that blatant music will unlock pocket books, stimulate palates, deaden screaming nerves and keep passengers calm at takeoff.

In fact, demand for this service has become so strong that about a year ago Muzak jumped into the business--after 50 years of single-minded devotion to background music and despite skepticism about proponents’ claims about foreground music. The field, currently limited to three or four “serious” companies, promises to become much more competitive in the near future, a Muzak executive said.

Foreground music--as practiced by Audio Environments Inc. (AEI) of Seattle, generally acknowledged as the biggest in the field with 13,000 clients nationwide--is aimed at the 76 million Americans born in the baby-boom years of 1945 to 1962, said president Michael Malone. These people tend to be music-conscious and many have spent big bucks to surround themselves with sound at home, in the car and jogging, he said. Foreground music is a logical extension that puts music in places where these people spend money, he said.

Best of all, from Malone’s point of view, foreground music is a marketing tool that people can enjoy even though they know they’re being manipulated. Last year, the Gallup Organization found in a poll for AEI that 91% of store and 73% of restaurant customers believed audi ble music had an effect on them, primarily in setting mood. Half of all customers said the music made them more comfortable, while 31% of store and 41% of restaurant patrons said foreground music had some effect on their decision to shop or dine at a particular place. And a few, 8% of retail customers and 3% of restaurant patrons, gave an answer that is music to a businessman’s ears: namely, that the music made it easier to spend money.

To Malone, foreground music is a subtle sales pitch that can be fine-tuned to particular customers. AEI will program tapes to fit the audience, whether it’s hot, fast music for central-city stores or cooler tunes for yuppie havens. The company has four broad programs categories--hot, medium, mild and mixed tempo. The music mood also can be varied to suit the time of day. For example, a restaurant manager told Gallup he played mellow music at noon--because “customers do not want to boogie at lunch”--and heavier beat music at night for the drinking crowd.

AEI’s customers are largely restaurants and department and specialty stores, competitive businesses in which minor differences can be crucial, Malone contended. (The company has 14 full-time programmers who put together tapes for various customer profiles, and 25% of AEI’s budget goes to paying royalties and rights to music. Its polling has found that the vast majority of captive listeners, whether they’re sailors or the suburban middle-class types, prefer original-artist music to rehashed scores.)

Target Marketing

“We’re into targeting,” Malone said. “Today in marketing, target marketing is where it’s at. If you can’t define who in hell your customer is, then you’re not going to be very successful and you’re certainly not going to be competitive. In any industry you’ve got to have a point of difference. What is it that you are that the guy across the street is not? We simply interpret that difference with music programming.”

Take those submariners, for instance.

“The Navy is definitely marketing to those sailors,” Malone said. “The contentment and peace of mind of those sailors is definitely important to the Navy. For the first time, the sailors at 2,000 feet under or whatever have an opportunity to dial into something restful or they can get up and rock.”

To find out what the sailors wanted, Marsalee Beaubelle of AEI’s Los Angeles office visited the crews and was surprised to find a big demand for country and contemporary religious music. There are a lot of southerners on submarines who aren’t crazy about city slicker rock music, she said.

Lt. Allan LaBarre, the Navy’s man in charge of music programming for the submarines, said AEI got the contract about a year ago because it was the low bidder. But, he added: “We like working with them. They’re more interested in working with the sailors.” Music programming has been available on the submarines since 1972, he said, but AEI is the first company to tailor its product to the crews’ preferences.

Dr. Leslie Levine, a Beverly Hills dentist, said he’s been using various kinds of music in his office for about 15 years. Over the years, dentists have tried a variety of sounds, including recordings of waterfalls, to calm patients, he said.

The system supplied to dentists by AEI includes headphones and a channel selector switch for patients so that each can chose among several programs. The frequent replacement of tapes is a big plus, he said. The biggest advantage, however, is that many patients need less painkiller and that some don’t require any.

One of AEI’s largest customers is The Limited, a retailer with more than 500 stores in more than 40 states, including California. The chain is a firm believer in foreground music, said Ed Razek, vice president of marketing. “We get lots of mail from customers saying ‘Your stores have the best music,’ ” he said. “It creates a positive mood and it gives our workers a lift, too.”

Skepticism of Muzak

This enthusiasm is countered by the skepticism of Muzak’s Terry Saidel, general manager of the company’s 5,000-client Southern California region. While acknowledging that foreground music is “here to stay,” Saidel isn’t sure it’s a cure-all. And he doubts that foreground music will ever account for more than 10% to 15% of his company’s business.

Muzak went into the foreground business because of customer demand, Saidel said. Retailers and restaurateurs have “an attitude that it helps their business,” he explained. But Muzak has no “hard evidence that it works,” he added.

And there are times when Muzak advises against foreground music. It tells customers that foreground music is bad in offices and factories, Saidel said. But if a client is adamant, Muzak will supply tapes to those places. “It’s a distraction in the workplace. We put it in and a few months later they call us back and say: ‘Put the Muzak back in.’ ”

And even Malone admits foreground music can be a mistake at times. “We supply boarding music to airlines. You want to see how important boarding music is, get on a plane where they miscued the tape and they’ve got the Sex Pistols instead of something soothing. Everybody’s sitting there with their fists clenched.”