Workplace music gets mixed reception

The speakers never stop pumping at Codeword, a public relations agency in Manhattan. All day. Every day. Any song by any artist can play for the entire office at any time.

Everyone is also empowered to skip a disliked song by using the app that controls the office’s Sonos speaker system.

On a recent Thursday afternoon at Codeword, Depeche Mode played over the speakers. A few employees were wearing headphones, opting out of the sonic community. “I have come to like it, but I hated it at first,” said Mike Barish, a senior editor at the agency.

The rise of the open floorplan office has exposed workers to many annoying habits that used to hide behind cubicle walls. Now, at least within an emerging vanguard of music-friendly offices, add coworkers’ musical preferences to that list.

“We’re getting a nice segment of commercial businesses installing Sonos,” said Brad Duea, managing director of the Americas at Sonos, which manufactures a popular line of wireless speakers.

The role of music at work is part of an unintentional arms race of sorts.

Office workers embraced earbuds and noise-cancelling headphones in large numbers as ways to cope with the lack of privacy that came with the open-floor plan. But using private music to restore some semblance of auditory personal space defeats the purpose of taking down cubicle walls, which was done in the name of company culture and collaboration.

Studies have found that listening to music can, under the right circumstances, make workers more productive. Other research has found that the beat of the music can have different effects on workers’ moods. Something with slower beats, like Enya, can relax an anxious worker. A fast pace can make workers more alert.

Then again, to some the mandatory music is another unwelcome experience, further evidence of the inhumanity of the open office.

“It’s a constant, frustrating distraction for me,” said Dan Bennett, who works in IT for a hosting company in the UK. When he turns off the office Sonos, his co-workers turn it back on within minutes. “You get called boring and a moaner, when all you want to do is concentrate!”

In a column for the Financial Times, Justine Roberts complained about the soundtrack playing over the loudspeakers at a tech company she visited for a meeting. She, too, found it distracting.

Codeword’s CEO uses the music for a different purpose: his own privacy. He and his co-founder sit in a corner of the open office space, where they control the volume on the nearest Sonos speakers. When they want to discuss something sensitive, they turn it up. — Bloomberg