Those fun playlists have a super interesting purpose
Here’s the Surprising Reason Why Grocery Stores Play Music When You Shop
Published on Apr. 21, 2025
We’ve all found ourselves grooving to that grocery-store music (sometimes it’s actually good!), but why is it there in the first place? Is it a sneaky way to get us to spend more? A trick to take our mind off the price of eggs? And is it our imagination, or do some supermarkets play way better music than others?
Reader’s Digest talked to Benjamin Lorr, author of The Secret Life of Grocery Stores: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket, and Phil Lempert, host of the Lost in the Supermarket podcast, to find out exactly why grocery stores play music when you shop. Read on to learn the whole jam on this toe-tapping trend.
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Why do grocery stores play music?
There are good reasons supermarkets pipe songs through the aisles—and it’s not to catch you bopping on the security cameras. Music is part of grocery chains’ overall strategy to make this weekly errand an enjoyable experience, which, of course, benefits them too. Here’s why they’re spinning tracks:
It makes us spend more
Music makes us want to fork over more cash—about 10% more, according to a study from the University of Bath School of Management published in 2022. Strangely, this phenomenon is true only on weekdays, researchers found.
The U.K. investigators crunched numbers on sales from about 150,000 grocery shopping trips and found that music drove up grocery tabs during the work week, while on weekends it had no effect. The researchers’ theory? People are more stressed out during the work week, and playlists relax them into tossing more in their cart. But on the weekend, we’re all happier, so music doesn’t have the same power over us.
Music makes for happy shoppers
Those peppy playlists put us shoppers in a better mood. (If you’ve ever grooved down the aisles to “Hungry Like the Wolf,” you know all about that.) Nearly 80% of customers like hearing music while shopping in-store, according to Mood Music, a company that creates playlists for retailers. It even makes them linger: A poll from MRC Data found that 40% of people admit to staying in the store longer when they like the music. (Glad we’re not the only ones!)
Having a grocery-store soundtrack may even make us less cranky about supermarket hassles. A Mood Media study found that 77% of customers say they’re more likely to wait in line if engaging music is playing.
It helps grocery stores stand out
Grocery chains know you have choices … Wegman’s, Whole Foods, Safeway, oh my! “With the low margins and appearance of homogeneity, supermarkets need to take every opportunity to distinguish themselves,” Lorr says. “And music is just another facet of the store that allows that.”
The carefully curated playlists are “part of the ongoing battle at the heart of all food retail: to really, truly know who their specific customer base is—and feed them products they, in particular, enjoy,” Lorr adds.
So what kinds of music do grocery stores play?
You’re in one store and they’re blasting Echo and the Bunnymen. In another, it’s Taylor Swift. A third favors yacht rock. It’s not random. “There is a tremendous amount of thought that goes into music selection,” Lorr says.
As you’ve probably noticed, many stores play a lot of “oldies”—which somehow, suddenly, means songs from the ’80s and ’90s. (I mean, is ’90s music really considered old music?!) But even if they don’t flash back, stores tend to play a peppy mix. There’s a science-backed reason to go with bangers: A study in BI Business Review found that when stores played upbeat pop music like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga instead of calm ballads, sales went up.
Curating the exact-right sound mix lets grocery stores “create an atmosphere where your particular customer feels seen, nods their head and feels welcome,” Lorr adds, citing his own local store, a hip specialty grocer that pipes in “nerdy jazz,” as an example of the idea. The music they play “really tells you something about the type of customer who shops there, and their self-perception is sophisticated.”
Lorr draws a contrast between that and, say, a Whole Foods or Stop & Shop, which might want its customers bopping to Hall & Oates or the Jackson 5 instead.
Does the type of music depend on the time or day?
Supermarkets switch up the song mix by season, day and even time of day, “basically to control the way people shop,” says food trends expert Lempert—aka the Supermarket Guru. “In the early morning, people want to get to work, so the music is faster. In the afternoon, when stay-at-home moms are shopping, they slow it down (think: Barry Manilow) to get them to relax, shop slower and see more items that they may want to buy on impulse.”
Grocery-store playlists change throughout the year too. You’ll hear “Monster Mash” slipped in there around Halloween (as anyone who has ever set foot in a TJ’s during pumpkin spice season knows). And from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, you’ll get to groove to holiday favorites (cue: Mariah and Bruce).
What’s on grocery stores’ playlists?
The song selection varies not just by chain but also by location. There are whole Reddit threads devoted to this. One poster said, “I’ve noticed that Publix has a Gen X playlist. I’ve heard INXS, Gin Blossoms, Counting Crows, Duran Duran, Green Day, Prince, Talking Heads and even Eddie Vedder.” Another lamented that growing up they heard Frank Sinatra, and now it’s Nirvana.
Of course, one person’s oldies is another’s new music, and as Lorr noted above, it really does depend on the clientele and image the store wants to project. Translation: You’ll find variation across stores, time of day and locations.
Do all supermarkets have music?
While the music thing is a huge trend, not every supermarket rocks out. Aldi doesn’t play music as a way to keep costs down and provide an efficient, in-and-out shopping experience. Target, which has a grocery section, didn’t have music for years, but now it does.
In a new twist, some chains that do play music are setting aside hours that are completely music-free, to make shopping comfortable for people with noise sensitivities. The New Seasons chain based in Portland, Oregon, has a sensory-friendly hour once a week where they skip not only music but also those (annoying) in-store announcements.
Who puts together these playlists, anyway?
Grocery chains hire companies that specialize in curating signature audio experiences for shoppers. Mood Music works with Trader Joe’s and Food Lion. Rockbot counts Bristol Farms and Walmart among their clients. Sirius XM reportedly provides tunes to ShopRite. Besides crafting custom mixes that set the right tone, these sound experts take care of the licensing end of things, so stores don’t get in hot water for cranking Green Day or Guns N’ Roses without the proper rights.
Some chains, including New Seasons, give their store managers and staff control over what wafts through the sound system. After all, they have to listen to it all day long. (Imagine the earworm that comes from hearing “Love Shack” on loop for hours on end?)
How else are grocery stores entertaining shoppers?
The new big trend is multimedia, Lempert says. “Stores are now adding 20 to 50 flatscreens that play videos and ads, and that will compete for the shoppers’ attention with the music—and may, in some cases, replace the music.”
Oh, no! We’d better keep grooving down the aisles, so they know we’d be all lost in the supermarket without our happy jams.
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Sources:
- Benjamin Lorr, author of The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket; email interview, April 14, 2025
- Phil Lempert, founder of Supermarket Guru and host of the Lost in the Supermarket podcast; email interview, April 10, 2025
- Journal of Marketing Research: “Understanding How Music Influences Shopping on Weekdays and Weekends”
- Grocery Dive: “New Seasons Market Starts Sensory-Friendly Shopping Hour”
- BI Business Review: “Lady Gaga Boosts Sales When Shop Is Full of Customers”
- Mood Media: “Getting Your Grocery Music Right”
- PR Newswire: “New Soundtrack Your Brand Study Conducted by MRC Data Discloses One of America’s Biggest Music Sources”
- Chain Store Age: “Tips for Incorporating Sound into the Customer Experience”
- BMI: “Value of Music Research”
