What Music Is Best For Waiting Rooms

A comfortable waiting room is one of the most vital parts of many physical establishments. It provides clients with a safe space to relax while waiting to be attended to.

Comfort in the waiting room goes past great lighting or comfortable and aesthetically pleasing furniture. The music played in a waiting room also affects the atmosphere and customers’ stress levels.

To provide a relaxed waiting room atmosphere, you will need to play the correct type of music. Below, we have provided the best music fit for your waiting rooms.

Why Waiting Rooms Need Music

It is no secret that people generally dislike being kept waiting, especially in business settings. The longer the wait time, the more uncomfortable and frustrated customers are.

Waiting in certain situations like medical offices and health centers can be especially unnerving. The unfamiliar faces, scents, and thoughts of what awaits them can be almost debilitating.

Establishments have recognized waiting as a part of a bad customer experience and have provided various means to alleviate customer tension and discomfort by giving comfortable waiting rooms.

A waiting room fitted with comfortable furniture and entertainment works wonders in helping customers become relaxed as they wait. It distracts them, allowing their perception of time to seem shorter than it is.

Some businesses spend so much time providing matching couches and adequate lighting that they often forget about the most helpful waiting room feature of all music.

Music might seem like an unnecessary addition to a waiting room, but in reality, it is one of the most crucial factors that determine the comfort level in your waiting room.

The music fits in different waiting room settings. It doesn't matter if it's in a spa or at a dental clinic, choosing the right type of waiting room music can make your clients more comfortable and improve the overall customer experience.

The atmosphere in a waiting room is often filled with tension, nervousness, and anxiety. Music works wonders to ease these negative feelings and help the clients become more relaxed.

Some benefits of waiting room music include:

Boosts The Mood

Several research on the effects of music on humans has proven that music plays a huge role in positively impacting a person’s mood. It does this by boosting the brain’s production of the dopamine hormone.

Dopamine affects a host of neurological functions, including motor control, motivation, reward, cognitive function, and maternal and reproductive behaviors. It affects memory, movement, and focus and drives people to deal with pleasurable activities.

The increased production of dopamine in the brain helps to reduce feelings of anxiety and depression. This takes away or slightly alleviates the stress clients may feel as they wait to be attended to.

The amygdala of the brain also processes music. The amygdala is involved in resulting emotions like fear, aggression, and happiness. It also plays a significant role in tying emotional meaning to our memories and making decisions.

Music stimulates the amygdala, bringing a boost of emotion. Playing soothing music helps clients relax, getting rid of negative emotions and improving their mood as they wait.

Relieves Stress

Several studies confirm that music helps reduce stress by stimulating the brain through music waves. By reducing the stress level, music also helps to combat pain by shrouding the brain in positive stimulus and reducing pain signals.

Music is often used in therapy for its numerous stress-relieving benefits. With the proper comforting tones, people can feel relaxed.

Privacy

Have you ever been kept in a waiting room without music and struggled to hold a conversation with a companion? In the silence, you will have little to no privacy and might be required to communicate in hushed tones and whispers.

Music provides the perfect background noise to act as a blanket over your conversations. With the music playing in the background, you can have private conversations without struggling to keep your voice below whispers.

This benefit is handy amongst the staff of an organization. Playing music in a waiting room creates a private environment for workers to communicate and pass information. This promotes an atmosphere with excellent working conditions that are pleasant for both the customers and workers.

Reduce Wait Times

It doesn’t matter if it’s in a queue or a waiting room, people don’t like to wait. It is often an uncomfortable experience that is also considered time-wasting. Keeping your clients waiting for an extended period contributes to a negative customer experience. They will become increasingly frustrated and annoyed and often take out their frustrations on the staff.

Playing the correct type of music in your waiting room provides a calming effect on the clients. With engaging tunes, you can successfully distract your clients from keeping track of time and thereby shorten their perception of time.

With something comforting and immersive playing in the background, clients can focus on being as relaxed as possible. A study carried out on patients in a GP’s waiting room showed that 88 percent of patients find that music improves their mood. For an element often overlooked, waiting room music has repeatedly proven to be an essential part of any successful organization.

The Best Waiting Room Music

Many customers will agree that waiting in a room with calming background music beats staying in a room with stifling silence and anxiety.

Music plays a significant role in improving customer satisfaction. It provides clients with a subtle form of engagement while they wait, making the time go refreshingly faster.

However, not all types of music fit every kind of waiting room setting. The best music for your waiting room differs on many factors, including your services, clients, and brand personality.

Choosing the best waiting room music is vital for your brand image. The tone, pitch, and volume of the songs you play have significant effects on your customers and workers.

Different music elicits different emotions. Include the fact that people have other music preferences, and you will find that picking suitable waiting room music is no easy task.

In a waiting room, you have to cater to different types of people with varying music preferences and find common ground amongst them. The music you choose has to be calming, inoffensive, and engaging.

To pick the best waiting room music, you need to consider:

1. Lyrics

Music is written by real people with real feelings. These people often pour their heart’s content into their lyrics and manage to transfer whatever they feel in the moment to the listeners.

The lyric of a song is a potent stimulant. It can strike a tone in a person, eliciting feelings and convincing them to act. The lyrics in a song provide subtle yet profound effects on the listeners.

While some people enjoy listening to songs with lyrics, many others prefer to listen to music without words. The lyrics of a song might create engagement as the listener tries to piece together the meaning behind the words, but it also distracts them from the beauty of the music.

It is also important to note that playing music with lyrics in your waiting room can be a bad idea. Some lyrics contain trigger words that the clients might find jarring and upsetting, thereby stressing them further.

Some lyrics might contain hints of violence and might trigger hostile behavior or PTSD, thereby ruining the calm atmosphere a waiting room should provide. Some lyrics might be insulting and offending, thereby annoying the client.

Lyrics can stimulate unwanted emotions of sadness, anger, or irritation. For example, playing music with sad lyrics in a hospital waiting room. With the client waiting to receive what might be life-changing news from the Doctor, hearing sad words is not exactly the kind of encouragement they need.

To avoid triggering your clients, it might be safer to stick to music without lyrics. Make a playlist of calming instrumental songs to provide your clients with a stress-reducing music session. Nature music made from the sounds of rain and animals, for example, is an excellent addition to any waiting room.

If you are, however, going to play songs with lyrics in them, it is a great idea to listen and ensure there are no vulgar or inoffensive words. Stick with prosocial songs, neutral songs, or songs about humanity. When choosing songs with lyrics, always choose the positive kind.

2. Genre

There are different music genres, and every person has a unique combination of genres they prefer. There are various styles of music, but in a waiting room, it is crucial to go with genres with positive effects on your clients.

Classical music is one of the most overused genres in waiting rooms. There is something about the lilting and smooth tones of classical music that is simply refreshing to hear.

While classical music is a great go-to, it isn’t always fit for every waiting room. Sometimes, you need something upbeat or different to stand out.

Other therapeutic genres like light jazz and contemporary goldies are an impressive addition to any waiting room. They satisfy most age groups and will not only cater to a specific clientele.

Pop music is also a fine addition to a waiting room. It is catchy in a distracting yet unobtrusive way that leaves its listeners in a good mood.

When choosing the perfect genre to play in your waiting room, always remember to screen the lyrics to provide a more satisfying customer experience.

3. Tone And Beat

Tone and beat are also essential parts of waiting room music. Like the lyrics, the tune and beat of music can affect the behavior and stress level of a listener.

Some waiting room music might seem like a good call but affect your clients differently than you hoped.

Upbeat music with a fast tempo might inspire your clients to be more positive. This is even better if it is paired with lyrics of positive messages. This type of music is often catchy and engaging and will probably get a head bop out of your clients.

A slower beat, on the other hand, will provide a more calming effect. It will slowly siphon the tension or stress out of your clients as they wait, making them more relaxed.

A slower beat calms people’s minds, an opposite effect of a fast beat. Ideally, you need music with 60 Beats Per Minute or BPM to help your clients relax.

A study shows that music played with 60 BPM can cause the brain to sync with alpha brain waves responsible for relaxation. It changes brain function and stimulates a feeling of comfort. This will reduce tension and anxiety, leading to happy and satisfied clients.

4. Volume

What’s the aim of your waiting room music? Do you want to play stress-relieving music, or will your music act as a noise-cancellation medium?

Managing the volume of the music you play goes a long way in setting the comfort level in your waiting room. Waiting room music can either give your clients a headache or serve its purpose.

Regardless of the genre you choose to play, it is vital to keep your music unintrusive. You don’t want to play your songs so loud that your clients and staff cannot hear themselves over the noise.

To ensure proper volume and sound control, it is essential to install quality speakers. This will adequately diffuse the sounds and create a great atmosphere. Keep your music between low and moderately loud for the best effects.

Choosing The Best Type Of Music For Your Waiting Room

To create a unique brand personality with your waiting room music, don’t just stick with the typical elevator music.

There are thousands of songs you can choose from. Always experiment with different varieties of music to find the one that works best for your clients and your brand.

When choosing the best music for you, always consider your brand image, aesthetic, and personality. What services do you provide? What age group do you cater to? What gender makes up the majority of your waiting clients?

Your answers will guide you in choosing the best type of music that serves your client.

When playing music in your waiting room, remember to:

• Filter your songs
• Create different playlists to avoid boring your clients
• Combine varieties
• Play upbeat music to keep clients alert and slow music to help them relax
• Native American, Celtic, Indian stringed instruments, drums, and flute music are great for relaxing
• Most importantly, ensure you settle your licensing and royalties to the necessary Performing Rights Organizations to avoid paying fines. Paying to play music in your establishment differs with size and function. Carry out due research to determine what payments you need to make and how best to go about them.

Choosing The Best Music With Loop TV

Although there are a lot of services that provide access to music, many of these services require a renewable subscription fee.

Loop TV, on the other hand, provides businesses with unlimited free music and non-music entertainment that cannot be rivaled.

Loop TV is a business TV and signage service that provides free premium entertainment to any public venue. This TV service provider offers over two hundred licensed channels for free display in any business venture.

With Loop TV, you don't have to worry about music licensing and subscription fees. All music audios and videos are licensed and ready for free use. All you need to do is enter your business details on the official Loop TV website and wait for your free Loop TV media player to be shipped to you at no extra charge.

Loop TV also provides clients with a unique, hands-off music experience. With its automatic scheduling and playlist features, you can create as many playlists you like and schedule them to play at chosen intervals.

You don't need to break your bank for great waiting room music. All you need is Loop TV.