Do restaurant chains have mandated music?

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cjd
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Do restaurant chains have mandated music?

Post by cjd »

At my local Burger King, they seem to play a satellite feed channel that has mostly 90s and 00s easy listening music all the time.

Subway plays a local easy listening station.

The Dairy Queen near me plays the local country music station, but I notice on times I've gone there in the afternoon it stops playing around 2 PM for some reason. At Christmas they usually play a local Christian station that plays mostly Christmas music.

The other Dairy Queen used to play Sirius/XM, mostly 90s music and at Christmas they played the holiday channel. Then they played country for a while and last I went they play nothing.

McDonald's usually has their own satellite feed, not sure.

I'm guessing this all has to do with corporate locations vs franchises, as it seems the franchisees play over the air stations.

You'll notice most franchise supermarkets, department stores and the like all have a corporate feed most likely. At least I don't ever recall hearing an over the air station playing in any of these places. Although most Bealls Outlets I've been to play XM The Blend.
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Re: Do restaurant chains have mandated music?

Post by storewanderer »

Dunkin Donuts seems to have a mandated radio feed.
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Re: Do restaurant chains have mandated music?

Post by Brian Lutz »

I'd say the majority of restaurants here don't play any music at all (which I suppose would save them from having to pay the ASCAP fees) but I did notice a Popeye's playing Cajun jazz the other day. You also see a number of restaurants that have TVs (a lot of newer McDonald's and Wendy's remodels seem to have these) but generally leave the volume off on those. One thing I saw that seemed a bit odd was that one Wendy's I went to recently had Food Network playing on the TV in the dining room, which seems rather counterproductive. Sonic has their own "radio network" they play, but usually it's too quiet to hear from the car.
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Re: Do restaurant chains have mandated music?

Post by bayford »

McDonald's, Popeye's, Moe's Southwest Grill, and Chipotle all have custom music channels programmed by Mood Media, which inherited this sort of business by purchasing Muzak. Chipotle further differentiates their music by time zone by having a separate channel for each of the four CONUS time zones.

Sonic's in-house radio station known as Sonic Live Radio was abruptly discontinued on October 1, 2019 after nearly 20 years in operation. I don't believe there's been any company-wide replacement created in the wake of the shutdown.
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