Re: [Coworking] Background Music in a Coworking Space

[Alex Hillman]

When one of our playlists end, the silence is deafening. It's a mad scramble to turn the music back on. 

Even if people don't like the music on, a little ambient noise has a huge impact on people's willingness to converse. They don't feel like they are "breaking the silence.

BONUS POINTS: take member-submitted playlists or stations and rotate them. When people enjoy what's on, they often say so out loud and you can commend the member author and make sure they know each other :)

-Alex

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/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, August 13, 2012 at 6:34 PM, RedRokk wrote:

Hey everyone, I have a quick question I would like to get your perspective on. 

We just started offering co-working space here in Bellingham, Washington. Our space fits up to 20 people comfortably, but often times we only have 2 or 3. We have been playing with the idea of adding light background music to the space that would play throughout the day. The target customer is developers, graphic designers, copywriters, and startups. We are wanting to make the space feel a little more active during slower points in the day or week. 

This is a very interesting research study done on noise levels. It suggests a specific level of noise actually encourages more collaboration and creativity: http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0514NoiseCreativity_RaviMehta.html 

What are your thoughts on playing music in the background?

Sincerely,

Tyler Byrd | President
Red Rokk Interactive, Inc

 

C: (360) 920-2462 | O: (360) 747-7401 | F: (954) 867-1177
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[Tom Brandt]

I think it is a good thing, depending on what it is. We have a couple of members who play quite a bit of music over the big speakers from their own collections or from rdio, spotify, etc. When they are not here it seems pretty quiet.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:34 PM, RedRokk <by...@redrokk.com> wrote:

Hey everyone, I have a quick question I would like to get your perspective on. 

We just started offering co-working space here in Bellingham, Washington. Our space fits up to 20 people comfortably, but often times we only have 2 or 3. We have been playing with the idea of adding light background music to the space that would play throughout the day. The target customer is developers, graphic designers, copywriters, and startups. We are wanting to make the space feel a little more active during slower points in the day or week. 

This is a very interesting research study done on noise levels. It suggests a specific level of noise actually encourages more collaboration and creativity: http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0514NoiseCreativity_RaviMehta.html 

What are your thoughts on playing music in the background?

Sincerely,

Tyler Byrd | President
Red Rokk Interactive, Inc

 

C: (360) 920-2462 | O: (360) 747-7401 | F: (954) 867-1177
By...@RedRokk.com | www.RedRokk.com

Video Introduction to Red Rokk: http://youtu.be/5XRSUn__jow

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[Thomas]

hi,

same thing here at Tau (France, Toulouse) we started plugging a pair
of speakers to one laptop some weeks ago and now the cable jump from
one laptop to another depending on who's here what's been played, the
mood etc ...

I think (and have experienced) that background music do help to keep a
better mood around and probably allows people to "forget" about people
based noise that come with a filled space (people walking, whispering,
phone ringing, doors opening etc ...)

on a practical manner : I've been looking at github hubot and play
(https://github.com/play/play/) for some time and plan to test such a
setup (related article : http://zachholman.com/screencast/play/).
Z. Holman article is also interesting on the human side of having a
common, community managed, music stream going on.

you could also use things like spotify and deezer to share, edit and
play playlists I suppose, and from my university's years I remember
tons of open source projects to handle "web based" jukeboxes

anyone got tips about the "hardware" side to setup this ? small form
factor pc, media friendly pcs ?

TR

Thomas Riboulet
+33 (0) 698 926 057

[Liam Gooding]

We play background music at http://fruitworks.co usually rotating popular radio stations or Spotify. We used it to get through the "quiet startup days" but now we're busier we still play it. We use a pair of 2.1 speakers plugged into a laptop but because our space is quite large, it's hard to get the sound to travel without being too loud at one end, so we're currently installing 6.1 speakers with the satellites mounted around the far corners of the space etc.

A member here made a shared music server in a hackathon - we haven't had chance to set it up yet and we're hoping that by the end of the next hackathon this month, the Mac OSX and Windows GUI clients for it will be done. If so, I'm sure he'll make it all open source.

Kind Regards,

Liam Gooding
Managing Director
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[Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking]

We have speakers that carry music through two of the rooms, which is the lounge and energy room (group high tops), and doesn't play throughout the rest of the space. This helps gives each of our rooms a different feel based on how people want to work for the day. The music is not very loud but it seems awkward when the music stops.

We have an iPod touch connected to the speakers so we can play their playlist through it or commonly pick a Pandora playlist. Any member can pick the playlist and I usually start it each morning and then someone may change it after lunch.

Craig

Creative Density

Denver

[John Wilker]

We use a central mac mini running Pandora and have a seed station request form on one of the white boards

Works well, it's quieter farther back into the building and of course headphones come out when Rick Astly comes on.

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences | Partner, Uncubed
(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

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[Miles Fidelman]

Call me a contrarian, but I like quiet, or at least conversation as background noise.  I don't think I'd rent space in an office with background music.  That's for elevators and dentists offices.

Miles Fidelman

[Jerome Chang]

I'd have to agree. This way people can choose to listen to music via own headphones. We already have plenty of background chatter to create that buzz. 

Jerome

www.BLANKSPACES.com

On Aug 14, 2012, at 9:14 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfid...@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

Call me a contrarian, but I like quiet, or at least conversation as background noise.  I don't think I'd rent space in an office with background music.  That's for elevators and dentists offices.

Miles Fidelman

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[Fay Easton]

Same at our Enterprise Hubs Miles - think members would ‘walk’(not dance)!

Fay

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[Matthew Arkin]

Most people in my office end up listening to music on their headphones but they they all kinda zone out of the community, some music playing lightly in the background, just enough to stimulate some conversation but not enough to distract me.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfid...@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

Call me a contrarian, but I like quiet, or at least conversation as background noise.  I don't think I'd rent space in an office with background music.  That's for elevators and dentists offices.

Miles Fidelman

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[Liam Gooding]

To be honest, we've had  one member openly say "I need absolute quiet in my office" and that member doesn't come in as often now, however the majority of our members said they preferred background music and so we opted for it. Also, when new people now come in for tours they see the music there, so people don't signup if its something they don't want in the space.

When people want to focus or phase out, they just "plug in" as normal and listen to their own thing.

- Liam

[Glen Ferguson]

We installed in-ceiling speakers during our remodel for background music and to be used for presentations and talks. We have an Airport Express hooked up to the system as an Airplay device people can stream to. We also looked at options like SiriusXM and Pandora. We decided not to run the risk of any copyright problems and are going with Pandora for Business. I figure we can always drop the subscription and let folks use headphones and do their own thing. Sadly, the only over the air radio we can receive is Top 40 with plenty of ads, so that's out.

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Glen Ferguson

Cowork Frederick

[John Wilker]

Most people end up using their own music but it encourages people to talk. We noticed before we added music, people whispered or were afraid to talk much in the main area. The music helps make it more obvious, that noise is ok.

Certainly a too each their own. We keep ours loud enough to hear but not so loud your own music would be drowned out.

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences | Partner, Uncubed
(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

[Thomas]

yes, similar things happened for us, everybody was soldered to their
headsets and earplugs to be able to focus

one day the speakers ended up on the new standing desk and nobody in
that room said anything about the speakers being plugged. the volume
is not loud, and when someone wants to focus that person generally get
the headset out, go to another room or we all switch to headsets.

in the end, the speakers did help making talks and communication
easier avoiding the "locked away" effect,

as usual proceed with community approval / talks I suppose

TR

[Sidi]

Hi all,
Here in C3, we have different areas, and on one of them, which fits about 35 desks, we play music, and is called the music room. It has been really popular!
The level of background noise to allow for conversations to spring about can also be achieved by installing white noise (sounds like HVAC system), it is quite effective, and people jsut think it is something that is part of the building - so people that "can't" work with music playing wont complain. We have white noise in the rest of the space. We also have a quiet space (where talking isn't cool), which is our counter part to the music room, so people have freedom to choose where they sit, and it seems to be working quite well for us..
The music room is our "loud" room, so it labeled as being the room where talking on the phone for a long time is ok (we have desks set up with phones actually), play videos, have louder team meetings etc...
If you have big enough a space to have different areas like this, I highly recommend it...
Sidi

[Nicolas Bergé]

Guys,

I haven't read anything particular on what kind of music you play.

A piece of advice from our own experience : Jazz. Jazz *swings* and we all know that SWING is what coworking brings to this world.

In late January we hosted the local Startup Weekend and on Sunday morning, after two tough nights, people were really exhausted. I decided to put some Billie Holiday songs. For those of you who know her, her voice is one of the most powerful music has known. Simple outcome : it gave enough strengh to startupers to carry on until Sunday evening.

Jazz.

*prozelitizing time* : ). And this is an example among many others.

Nicolas Bergé

Les Satellites

[Skid Vis]

Here at CoVis CoWorking we have a SONOS sound system which lets anyone set-up playlists and whatnot on pretty much any device available. 

It's great, as silence can be deafening, but it's also a great source of conversation as we all chit-chat about whatever song/artist someone has chosen.

Music is sorta that universal language that can bring people together pretty quickly, IMHO.

-- Skid Vis --

CoVis CoWorking - www.covisco.com

Omaha, Nebraska

 

[John Wilker]

As to what kind of music, at Uncubed it's pretty eclectic. We ask for seed artists and pick a different pandora station each day. It ranges from gangsta grass (which is hilarious if you've never listened), to jazz, to 80's rock and most everything in between.

Sometimes folks will get up and just change the station too, the machine that runs it is wide open so they can down vote a song or change songs/stations.

We really wanted to use something like turntable.fm where folks who wanted to contribute could, but it doesn't have a "muzak" mode so every person in the room would be downloading the music even if their machine was muted.. Seemed a waste of bandwidth

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences | Partner, Uncubed
(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

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[Alex Hillman]

Same here - we use Songza playlists quite a bit, and a number of our members have taken to building Spotify playlists that are rather good.

It's mixed, like others have said. And if someone doesn't like what's playing, we happily take requests in the form of new playlist recommendations :)

-Alex

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Susan Evans]

We always have our dials in Seattle tuned to KEXP, the greatest radio station on earth. :) You can stream it via kexp.org. 

To add into the general conversation, we find that having a little bit of background music, even if it's quiet, helps to even out the overall "tone" of our space. There is something eerie about having no background music in our space - makes it feel more like a library and less like a coworking space to me. 

But to each space their own, right? That's the whole idea - do what your community digs.

Susan
__
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206-323-6500(o)

206-484-5859(m)

[rachel young]

We used a spare laptop and speakers to stream WOXY  (Cincy and Austin folks in particular may remember them; to say I was a big fan is an understatement), but when they went down we switched to NPR (where a former WOXY DJ also worked) or KEXP or the Underground 80s SomaFM, or sometimes a custom playlist on Winamp or Grooveshark.

We were always careful to play work-appropriate music and at a low volume. I hate soundwars, so if someone else wanted to play something, either the main music gets turned off, of they put on headphones. The volume is always at a respectful level for others who are working, on a call, concentrating, etc. 

We are also on a busy street, so in the spring, summer, and fall we have outside noise that helps with whitenoise, but in the dead of winter (or the dead of summer when we close all windows and have the a/c on) we needed a little extra something. Music worked!

r.

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[Fay Easton]

Now Billie Holiday I could work with!

 

Sounds fantastic Nicolas - am a great believer in the power of music to restore the spirit.

 

Lucky StartUps.

Fay

 

From: cowo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cowo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Bergé
Sent: 15 August 2012 09:37
To: cowo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Coworking] Re: Background Music in a Coworking Space

 

Guys,

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[RedRokk]

wow Fantastic replies to this post, thanks everyone. 

From what I am reading the general consensus is that music is great for making the space more vibrant and welcoming. It sounds like the best way to go when possible, is to break sound by rooms. I really like the playlist idea, and think running a hackathon would be a great way to introduce it. 

Tyler

[Samir Madi]

Here we use groovissimo.fm or groovesalad, some times AccuJazz.

Any other music: headphones.

[Paul Reynolds]

I saw a really great presentation from a GitHub employee that demonstrated their "Play" system which has since been open sourced:

https://github.com/play/play

Their motivation was to not only give everyone the ability to DJ, but to connect their distributed employees as well. If your ears aren't too sensitive to dirty words, Zach also made a pretty funny screencast about it:

http://vimeo.com/31712158


--
Paul Reynolds
http://about.me/paulreynolds

[Elton Rivas]

Funny timing - we were just talking about this. We usually use Turntable.fm - feel free to join in if you ever want at turntable.fm/coworkjax. It works out well since it allows the community to vote up/down the song choices and play whatever.

Cheers,

Elton

CoWork Jax

[Tom Ball]

Great discussion a while ago on background MUSIC

Sidi mentioned white noise - has anyone tested different background NOISE (e.g. ambient noise not music - think waterfalls, forest, chatter etc)

I completely buy both arguments (Music doesn't appeal to everyone + Silence can be deafening/antisocial) - and would love to try ambient noise but worry that waterfalls will send everyone to the bathroom all the time!

I'll just be brave if not and report back

(Example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008H2R2TK/ref=sr_1_album_7_rd?ie=UTF8&child=B008H2R6A0&qid=1347366889&sr=1-7 )

[Anis Bedda]

Hello everyone, 

I am reviving an old thread here to look for some awesome tunes to play in @transformabxl :) 

I noticed that music played in a coworking space at a reasonable level is great to cover the noise of conversations, and conversations between coworkers become less disturbing to the others. 

Now on to what to play? I figured that music played should stay quite homogeneous with minimum vocals and no changes that call the attention... I totally agree with Nicolas about Jazz being a great fit for a working environment, deep house is great, chambre pop is good also, acid jazz and jazz mixes are a great fit.... 

Hence my question, do you guys have good links to mixes I could download, preferably jazzy ones ? 

Here I am starting with some good deep house and house mixes from Belgium: https://soundcloud.com/attari 

Pax

A. 

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[George Aye]

We've been using a Sonos system after repeatedly having drop outs from a hifi system hooked up to Apple TV. 

The Sonos has been great for two reasons: anyone in our space can download the app to control it from their phones or laptops which means that the playlist is shared with everyone and gives anyone the ability to change it whenever they want. And secondly, the device lets you sign in to many compatible streaming music services (Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, Songza, etc) and this has given everyone in the space the ability to get access to multiple song libraries. 

George

http://loganshare.com

[Murilo Malta]

We're just starting our space, but this is one question that i also was wondering.

We are using a brazilian player called SuperPlayer: https://www.superplayer.fm/ (sorry it's in portuguese)

You can choose lots of categories and it does the sellection automatically for you.

[Alex Linsker]

At Collective Agency we've developed some guidelines for what works for us. The measurable goals I look at for playing music is:

- to maximize the number of people who choose to not wear headphones, and 

- to maximize the number of people who say they enjoy the music a lot and that it helps them focus.

Music that works for what our members expect:

- music without words in English (other than Christmastime or Ella Fitzgerald-era jazz). If people understand words, it's distracting. World music with other languages works well too.

- music without a strong bass.

- our defaults are jazz and classical radio stations.

- we have some members who change the stations (very rarely, a couple times a week total) if they don't like the song that's playing. 

- There's a sheet on top of the stereo with these guidelines on it, so people know how music is chosen.

For volume, there's a very specific range where it's not loud enough to be distracting, and not quiet enough where most people have to strain to hear it. Radio stations tend to moderate the songs to a pretty tight volume range. Having music on within that range when someone new walks in definitely increases the percent of people who sign up and become members here, compared with when music is too quiet or not on.

My main joy from having music on is because it leads to smoothing out the sound in the main room, for more conversations spoken in normal voices, and because all that leads to more people signing up.

Alex

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[Marius Amado-Alves]

No coworkers here work on music e.g. composers?

I do.

I cannot listen to others music while I work on my music.

Maybe that's why you don't have composers in your place...

Eventually I am going to operate a space, so the replies here advocating background music worry me...

A certain amount of non-musical noise is ok and welcome. I would think the "natural" noise of cars in the distance, people speaking, moving, typing is enough.

Continuous same frequency range noise like from HVAC is an health hazard. In the long run you get tinnitus, headaches, insomnia, lack of concentration.