Background music (also called CMP or "Custom Music Programming") can be configured from the Music > Settings section. First you have to enable it by making sure the toggle is green. Once enabled, you can tweak the settings to optimize the benefits of this service. There are 5 settings to consider when setting up your background music:
- Delay Between Background Music Songs: You can choose to insert a break in the music between songs to prompt users to pay for songs. Some call this type of background music "attract mode". We recommend inserting a delay of at least 2-3 minutes to give people time to realize the music has stopped and decide to play something.
- Delay Before Background Music Starts: By inserting a delay after paid music ends, the silence should prompt some patrons to queue up more songs, as may not be aware that background music is enabled. We recommend 5-10 minutes.
- Insert a delay after [ ... ] songs: Here, you can choose to play some songs before inserting the delay. This gives the illusion that they are actually paid songs. For example, you can play 3 background songs, they pause for 3 minutes, then play 3 more, then pause, etc.
- Paid Play Interrupts Background Music Songs: This is enabled by default. If you disable this, a background song will finish playing before a paid song starts. This is sometimes used so patrons don't know it's background music because a song cutting off in the middle is the tell-tale sign of a background song.
- Random Mode: Each CMP channel consists of a specially picked list of songs. We recommend shuffling the songs so employees don't get sick of the same songs in the same order day after day.
You can also schedule background music. It is generally a best practice to schedule the background music to be available only outside peak hours. For example, if you find that most paid plays occur between 7pm and 1am, we suggest that you schedule background music to turn off no later than 7pm, then turn back on the following day. This will provide the venue with more ambiance during the slower hours, without having a potentially negative impact on the more lucrative peak hours, where silence between paid plays does not tend to last very long.
We realize every location is unique, and while one venue may be ok with "dead air" to encourage play, another may not. You know your locations better than anyone, which is why we give you the tools to customize each account to maximize earnings.
To Schedule background music:
- Click the calendar icon to the right of the on/off toggle, then click the blue "+"
- Set all of your values per the above setting options
- "At the end, revert to" should be disabled / RED, meaning at the end of your schedule, background music turns off
- If you would like this schedule to repeat (which is most common), toggle the Repeat button to GREEN
- Choose your recurrence (Example: every Sunday)
- Check: Repeats indefinitely or enter an end date for your schedule