The office behind the music.

by | Jul 7, 2016 | Firewood Life | 380 comments

The office behind the music.

We have a Sonos music player in our office. It’s a smart speaker system that allows you to bring all your music services together. Download the Sonos app and you can play, pause, skip, and contribute music to the office. So what does that mean for a group of creative, curious people of varying ages, backgrounds, etc.? It can start arguments and divide teams. But it can also form alliances and generate a lot of friendly banter. For us, it brings a huge amount of music genres, styles, and knowledge to the table. For better or worse…

As part of orientation, we encourage new employees to to download the Sonos app right away. Most people comply but don’t really know what they are doing. And really, who walks into a new job and bogarts the music on the first day?

Most mornings are quietly abuzz with catching up on emails and other boring business stuff. When it’s TOO quiet, inevitably someone chooses to mix it up and Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) by Silentó is suddenly blaring at full volume. This is the cue to all in the office to find something to play or we all will be poking our eardrums out having to listen to Watch Me on repeat all day. Most days whoever gets to the office first will put on a genre or a prefab playlist (yawn).

I think it is safe to say that prefab playlists are finite and the algorithms genre or artist stations use are ridiculous and repetitive. We had to create our own.

If most songs are about 4 minutes long, it will take about 120 songs to fill an eight hour day. This is a daunting task to repeat every day. Any one person could load all their favorites and still we wouldn’t get there. Also, with everyone’s taste in music being different, we could end up with a lot of ears with headphones.

We needed input from everyone to make this work.

 

It started one rainy, wintery morning when one of our creative directors quietly walked in, soaked to the bone, and started putting songs about rain in the queue. A few songs in, someone realized…  “Hey, these songs all are about rain!” Thus prompting a few others to add their songs of rain to the list. I looked for Purple Rain by Prince, and was sad to see his music is not on Spotify or Rhapsody. But a new art director happened to have a TIDAL account and was able to add that iconic song to the list. (Her TIDAL account came in handy a few months later when we wanted to celebrate Prince’s music with an all day Prince tribute.)

Success! People were engaged. The office was united. Maybe I’m being dramatic… So we brainstormed further. On a Friday, a writer threw out songs about Friday. Turns out there are approximately 8 — not quite playlist potential. Someone else suggested everyone contribute a song from the first concert they attended. That was fun, but that playlist consisted of about 15 songs. We tried making mixes celebrating artist’s birthdays. Did you know that Cher, Pete Townsend, and Joey Ramone were all born the same week? In hindsight, this made some really weird playlists and a lot of people asking “Why are we listening to this?”

 

We needed to think bigger… Our first collaborative brainchild: Power Trios. A power trio is a rock and roll band format having a lineup of guitar, bass and drums, leaving out the second guitar or keyboard that are used in other rock music quartets and quintets to fill out the sound with chords. While one or more band members typically sing, power trios emphasize instrumental performance and overall impact over vocals and lyrics. — but that’s just Wikipedia’s opinion.

At first it was easy. Green Day. Nirvana. The Jam. Cream. Dinosaur Jr. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble. Violent Femmes. The Police. Primus. Band of Skulls. Motörhead. The Stray Cats. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The Secret Machines.

Then it got complicated. The Beastie Boys. The Fugees. Big Audio Dynamite. Destiny’s Child. The Supremes. Salt N Pepa. De La Soul. Technically are not power trios but merely three member bands. Not everyone is well versed in the finer points of the music industry so we had to make some concessions. And how do you reject the anonymous voices from the back of the room, “Wilson Phillips!” or “Tony! Toni! Toné!”?

We did have some audible groans. All “prog rock” was vetoed.  So no Rush or Emerson Lake and Palmer. Many of you may be too young to remember them, but I think our operations guy was tortured by an older brother who was into prog rock. A freelancer’s head almost popped off when he walked in and Poison by Bel Biv Devoe was playing. When we explained the theme, he immediately jumped in and added a whole new level to the playlist.

And how does The Wind Cries Mary by The Jimi Hendrix Experience stack up next to More than a Woman by the Bee Gees? Remarkably well, considering the next song will be a completely different. Our “Power Trio” playlist lasted for three days.

 

Now that we had set the bar, how could we go even bigger? It took a couple of weeks, but one day someone mentioned they had never seen Pulp Fiction. “Let me put on the soundtrack….” (Insert light bulb here!)  Hey, why don’t we start a favorite movie soundtrack playlist? I think we hit the mother lode. Movie soundtracks are literally infinite and range from spooky instrumentals like Halloween and Twin Peaks to fun classic pop music like Stand By Me and Almost Famous. And everyone had more than just one to add.

Soundtracks are easily the most successful playlist to date. Everyone got involved and it lasted nearly a week. . We had so much fun guessing the movies and who added it. And now it has dropped into the ether. With one click of the ‘clear queue’ button the playlist was lost forever.

 

Collaborative playlists are the future. Not to stretch this too far, but creating them is really quite similar to our work. We have to identify our audience — even if it’s a large group of diverse people — with a hope that they’ll connect. We have to define what they need from the product, the brand, the business, and deliver. And hopefully, succeed. We are our audience and we are much more open to all kinds of music now that we have peers bringing it to the table. Or I should say to the Sonos Player.

In the words of an old-school musician, John Denver, “Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same.”

Well said.

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