Music

Overhead music in brick-and-mortar stores is so common today that many people don’t think twice about it. There’s a reason why it’s become an unofficial industry standard — music has a powerful psychological effect on shoppers.

The best marketing is the kind that customers don’t even perceive as such. In-store music can fall comfortably into that category if you use it correctly. Once you know how your song choice can influence customers, you can use it to your advantage.

I haven't been writing too much lately as I've been busy on a number of personal projects. One of those projects has been redoing my office at home. My previous office space was put together haphazardly a few years ago as a response to the pandemic and finding I needed my own space for both work and play. Fast forward a few years and I now find I want the office space to be better designed, more functional, and include better furniture.

This past month I replaced a line of Hi-Fi speakers I've listened to and enjoyed for the past 20 years with a pair of new floor speakers from Klipsch. It's an acknowledgment that my hearing and tastes have changed and it's time to listen to my music through a new stereo system. This recognition of needing to do things differently has become a common theme for me lately. I'm finding the old ways aren't working and perhaps joy can be found again by doing something new. With this theme on change, instead of blogging only when I'm inspired by great ideas or events, I decided to blog every few days as I take part in the 100 Days to Offload challenge.

For Christmas, my son bought be half a dozen albums from what I call the Discogs "bargain bin". These are the vinyl records being offered for two to five dollars from the same seller you might buy more expensive purchase as the shipping and handling gets cheaper per record when you buy more albums. It's really a hit or miss on the quality of used albums you can find at this price range. Despite the cheapest of these albums my son purchased, Tuff Enuff by The Fabulous Thunderbirds is the album I have enjoyed most out of the lot.

It was early 1981 and my Dad received an offer from Columbia House to join the Columbia Records Club. For one penny a person could get eleven vinyl records by joining this music club. Better yet, fill in the "secret bonus" 12th box with your album of choice and you got an additional album for free. Nevermind the marketing ploy here that you would be committed to buy additional albums at full catalog price in the months to follow...my dad was about to receive a dozen albums from his favorite bands all at once. So many albums were about to come through the door, that my Dad let my sister and me each pick out a record for ourselves. Whether my Dad liked my choice or not I can't remember, but I picked AC/DC's Back in Black.

My wife and son are struggling with my sudden obsession of turntables and vinyl records. I'm slightly confused of their surprise but I understand.

They didn't know that optimistic teenager that spent hours listening to LPs and additional time recording them on cassette tape for my Sony Walkman. They didn't know that me in college while living in a KU dorm where every room on 6th Floor in Ellsworth Hall set the volume on their stereo to Level 11.

The Ramones, Beatles, Grateful Dead, Journey, Kansas, Rush, Johnny Cash, Guns n Roses, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Pink Floyd. They knew me back then.

A few months ago, I reviewed six different vinyl record turntables due my renewed interest in listening to music pressed on vinyl records. Despite all six vinyl turntables being good choices to consider, I still needed to select the turntable I would bring into my home. In the end, it was the Fluance RT82 Reference High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable that I chose as my latest stereo component. 

When I entered college just after graduating high school in 1986, there was a new band from my neck of the woods that just spoke to me. The band was call The Rainmakers and they were from Missouri.

Surprisingly, I recently sought out and purchased a vinyl record turntable. This is a surprise to me because I've spent the last three decades moving from the opposite direction as my music collection evolved from vinyl and cassette tape to compact discs and then finally to digital music stored as MP3 files on my computer and mobile devices. In this century, I don't even know if you can call it collecting music because I now subscribe monthly to an endless library of artists and songs through various music streaming services.

I'm a big believer that it is the small positive things we do in our day that have the biggest impact on our own well being.  From here through the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, I've decided to just blog about the small things I'm doing to escape from the anxiety producing headlines in our news. Today, after my day of teleworking, I'm finishing up what I started over the weekend. I'm listening to the second half my Star Wars LP, Sides 3 and 4.