Season’s repeatings
Some stores try mixing up holiday songs to avoid burnout
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... Silver bells, silver bells ...
Have a holly, jolly Christmas ...
If your brain is currently brimming with these classic Christmas songs — made famous by the likes of Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Burl Ives — you’re not alone. More often than not, central Ohio shops and restaurants are booming with Christmas tunes during this time of year
Many stores have been playing the music since at least Thanksgiving. And, by the time the calendar reaches Dec. 25, shoppers are sure
to have heard Perry, Bing and Burl sing the staples again ... and again ... and again.
Just ask Joy Rice, a cashier at Beechwold Hardware in Clintonville.
“I like the Christmas music in small doses,” Rice said. “When you have it for six or eight hours, it does tend to be very repetitive.”
Beechwold Hardware is among several area businesses attempting to cut down on the monotony.
To reduce the redundancy, the store alternates between two channels on Siriusxm Satellite Radio: One plays nothing but Christmas music; the other offers old-school blues music (which the store regularly plays throughout the year).
“We have kind of a fan base in the store,” Rice said, “and the customers are used to that music that we play all the time.”
At German Village’s the Book Loft, assistant manager Mike Babcock begins the holiday season by playing Christmas music in just a handful of the bookstore’s 32 rooms; the other rooms feature fare heard year-round, including Celtic music.
“The night before Thanksgiving ... I change our main stereo system, which plays in three different rooms,” Babcock said. “I put on Christmas music just on that one stereo.”
As Christmas approaches, Babcock adds holiday music to other rooms — a kind of gradual warmup to the season rather than an abrupt shift.
“I don’t want them all bombarded with ... a bunch of Christmas music in a bunch of rooms at once,” he said.
Other establishments are shifting away from the standards.
Jason Williams, who owns the vintage-toy store Big Fun Columbus in the Short North, has chosen a mix of music this month, including tunes familiar from Warner Bros. cartoons by composer Raymond Scott, holiday music by the group Los Straitjackets and bigband music by Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.
“The goal of brickand-mortars is to get folks in your door,” Williams said, “and if you’re just doing the same old crap that you’ve been doing for years — and just beating these same dumb songs into people’s heads — you’re going to force people to go online.”
Matt Reber, the manager and buyer at the Wexner Center Store in the Wexner Center for the Arts, likes to mix things up. His perspective is borne of experience: From the late 1990s to mid-2000s, Reber was employed at Barnes & Noble on Sawmill Road.
“Barnes & Noble used to play five different CDS a month — over and over,” Reber said
At the Wexner Center Store, however, Reber favors a wide-ranging playlist.
“My first favorite Christmas record is the Phil Spector one (“A Christmas Gift for You),” Reber said. “My current favorite Christmas record that’s come out in the last few years is the Sharon Jones one (“It’s a Holiday Soul Party”).
But Reber also favors offbeat picks, including filmmaker John Waters’ compendium “A John Waters Christmas” featuring Tiny Tim’s rendition of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and Alvin and the Chipmunks’ interpretation of “Sleigh Ride”.
Customers are exposed to Christmas music only while shopping; employees bear the burden of repeated listens to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
To change things up, Bexley’s Gramercy Books allows its eight employees to help shape the music heard in the store. The results are predictably diverse: An older manager chooses classics by Frank Sinatra, while a college student who works in the store opts for Pentatonix, a contemporary a cappella group.
“You don’t want to get worn out, because if you’re annoyed with a song, you don’t want the customer to be like, ‘Oh, well, they’re very annoyed,’” said assistant manager Nikki Snyder, who admits to being a fan of the Trans-siberian Orchestra.
She’s mindful of matching music to the mood inside the store.
“Especially when ... it’s getting really dark in the evening but it’s cold and there’s snow blowing around, that’s when people coming into a warm store want something like Bing Crosby singing ‘The Christmas Song,’” Snyder said.
Playnetwork, a company in Redmond, Washington, that supplies businesses with background music, is aware of the risks of overwhelming workers with Christmas music.
“Even if it’s all different, unique holiday songs, it does all sound the same,” said Playnetwork music supervisor Mark Campbell. “It’s a challenge because the employees, they’re there in the store for eight-plus hours a day, and they’re subjected to that.”
Campbell recommends gradually integrating holiday tunes into a store’s musical rotation (as the Book Loft does).
“We really encourage percentages — 25 percent, 33 percent,” Campbell said. “The beginning of December, we start pretty low, and by the time Christmas rolls around, we’re maybe as high as 75 percent,” referring to the proportion of holiday music in a store.
Campbell also advises stores to integrate their Christmas playlist with music heard throughout the rest of the year.
“It’s still going to be a little rough going from a standard song to holiday, but if it’s the same artist that they’re already hearing — or they hear jazz and here comes another holiday jazz song — that’s what we like to do,” he said.
This season, Ingrid Michaelson’s cover of “Looks Like a Cold, Cold Winter” is getting plenty of play, Campbell said.
“It still has kind of the jazz arrangement but it has the modern twist on it, as well,” he said.
Is there no room for traditional Christmas music? Amy Kendall, an employee at T.j.maxx and Homegoods on Henderson Road, thinks there is.
Although her store plays the usual suspects — including tunes by Michael Buble and Mariah Carey — Kendall said that the songs help get shoppers in the right frame of mind.
“I don’t know if it helps them necessarily decide to buy,” Kendall said, “but I think it makes them enjoy the shopping experience a little bit more.”
Kendall does not mind the music, either — in fact, she said it makes her work go more quickly.
“I notice it more after the store is closed and we’re straightening up,” she said. “That’s when I really enjoy it because it makes me motivated to straighten more and it’s less tedious to do the work after everybody’s left.”
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