In-store music

Pete · Tue 10 Aug, 2004 18.12

I'd like to know your personal experiences with the music inside shops. Today I was in a furniture shop where after suffering the horror of Enrique Inglwhatit's "Hero" in panpipes I enjoyed a rather pleasant Carpenters ballad. Then I entered McDonalds to buy ice cream and despite it being land of the retarded monkeys staff wise my morale was at an all time high by the delights of MC Hammer blasting out of the speakers.

fusionlad · Tue 10 Aug, 2004 18.34

I was in Swansea branch of Top Man at the weekend, but I couldn't bear to stay in there too long, as the music was MUCH too loud. I think Top Man do some sort of in-store DJ'ing thing on Saturdays. Do you remember Radio Top Shop? I remember the DJ having his little booth under the stairs in the Plymouth branch. Chris Moyles began his career on Radio Top Shop too.

McDonalds in Plymouth always seem to have the local GWR station on, Plymouth Sound.

I think I'd go mad if I worked in a shop which played 'elavator music' or pan pipes all day. It must be hell at Christmas too, with all those cheesy Christmas tunes being played again and again.

The national Virgin Megastore radio station doesn't seem to bad, I quite often hear something which sounds good, and wait to hear who it's by.

Card shops always seem to have a very tinny music system, which makes everything sound crap.

James Martin · Tue 10 Aug, 2004 20.00

There are two McD's in Hinckley - one in town and one on the outskirts with a Drive Thru

The Drive Thru one plays its own CDs but the one in town usually has Radio 1 on. It went through a spate of having Mercia on (Coventry's GWR) followed by Fosseway (local station which lives about 30 paces down the road) after they launched for a brief period in the late 90s. Before that it played its own stuff too.

KFC in Hinckley on the other hand play Classic Gold Coventry. Oh yes.

What pisses me off most about Hinckley is that there is no Burger King.

nwtv2003 · Tue 10 Aug, 2004 21.35

Well as you may know I work for the Warrington branch of Morrisons which constantly has music playing 24 hours a day, though I am certain this comes from an external source, the only things that are generated by the store is the announcements for staff or some offers. It can be quite annoying as songs are usually looped and usually appear at the same time every day. They also play some announcements for offers that can get annoying, as well as the one telling customers to look after their purses etc, though we all believe it should be changed to 'Theives operate in this area'

Though Asda FM always seems interesting to me, it has Asda jingles playing.

James Martin · Tue 10 Aug, 2004 23.47

To be fair it's piss easy to run an instore radio station - especially if it's non-stop music with the odd sweep or promo announcement here and there - Winamp with the SqrSoft Crossfade and DSP Plugins should do it.

To playlist a station's pretty easy. StationPlaylist Creator is a scheduler that creates M3U playlists. We've been using it at my Uni station, however I'm dumping it in favour of RCS Selector over this summer. But it's cheap and good to power a shop station and it is good for student stations too - I really need the Selector experience tho'

Somerfields don't have anything on and that sucked when I worked there.

Neil Jones · Wed 11 Aug, 2004 00.14

Flava wrote:To be fair it's piss easy to run an instore radio station - especially if it's non-stop music with the odd sweep or promo announcement here and there - Winamp with the SqrSoft Crossfade and DSP Plugins should do it.

I thought it was even easier than that:

Take any device that plays CDs.
Connect it to a set of speakers joined up.
Play a CD.

Job done.

Or am I missing something?

James Martin · Wed 11 Aug, 2004 00.24

Yes. A CD needs changing every 80 minutes and can't do slick segways.

Pete · Wed 11 Aug, 2004 00.43

Flava wrote:Yes. A CD needs changing every 80 minutes and can't do slick segways.

Can if you've mixed your own disc at home.

Plus there are plenty CD players with three disc changes available.

Chris · Wed 11 Aug, 2004 01.11

nwtv2003 wrote:Though Asda FM always seems interesting to me, it has Asda jingles playing.

I seem to remember that Asda FM is an actual radio station - produced by Teamtalk. Apparently it is piped in via satellite. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Teamtalk also do other stations, such as Costcutter FM and broadcast those on Sky for all (who are interested?!) to hear?

Also, does Homebase FM exist as a radio station? Or is it a load of tunes just slapped together on a CD with some jingles and talk?

tillyoshea · Wed 11 Aug, 2004 09.13

Chris wrote:Also, does Homebase FM exist as a radio station? Or is it a load of tunes just slapped together on a CD with some jingles and talk?

Homebase FM used to drive me nutty when I worked there. But it no longer exists - They now play classical music on an even shorter loop than the Homebase FM used to be on. There was always great relief by about 4pm when the presenter changed from the man to the woman (or maybe the other way round) so you got to listen to a different loop (albeit with much the same music).

I could never understand why they used to say that Homebase FM was "Live via Satellite", when it so obviously wasn't (live). And the links were so cheesy: "What a great song! There's more music to come on Homebase FM". They also used to regularly plug news programmes that didn't exist ("All the latest news coming up after this song on Homebase FM")

PRODISC/DS · Mon 20 Sep, 2010 16.51

Hello, I know quite alot about Instore Radio.
Spar Live- REDIFFUSION MUSIC
Asda FM- HEADLAND MEDIA
HomeBase FM- DMX MUSIC (I infact have one of their players, A ProDisc DS To be exact, It is very reliable and BUILT LIKE A TANK! It's made by Shinano Kenshi and has a PLEXTOR Drive for CDs)