Ecommerce and Music: Usually a Bad Idea

Music that Works

The internet and music sometimes get along really well. Apple has made a fortune using their patented web design e-business solutions to get people to buy mp3s, and have long been a staple of making money using the internet and technology in novel ways. Likewise, YouTube and other similar video and audio aggregating sites have made a fortune on advertising using a powerful yet elegantly simple ecommerce marketing strategy, in which they simply build up a huge volume of traffic. But that’s really only a special niche—people go to those sites to buy or select music that they want to hear. 

Terrible Music

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, those rinky-dink sites that still play those hokey MIDI files from the 1990s. Let’s be honest, no one wants to hear that.

Music Leads to 1 Very Unhappy Customer

So not too many people do the MIDI thing anymore, but companies will still try to spice up their web page with some music that they force the customer to listen to. Erik Islington describes his horror story about music on web sites:

“It seems like the stop buttons don’t work very well anymore in the web browsers, or you have to hunt endlessly for a little Quick Time button hidden somewhere near the bottom of the screen. Meanwhile, you’ve woken your baby up, your wife yells at you, you get angry and yell something back, then go away to cool off, but you fall down the stairs and break your ankle. You curse out your wife, who then refuses to take you to the hospital, so you end up limping to the hospital. When you finally get out of the hospital the next day and crutch home, you find your wife has left, selling your $300,000 home for $5000 cash to 20 Australian backpackers.”

Lessons Learned

Poor Eric lost everything because of a company’s poorly constructed marketing strategy. Okay, so maybe his example is a bit extreme, but you’re still risking incurring the wrath of the customer by making him or her listen to music that he or she did not choose. Because let’s face it, most people have their audio all set the way they like it and don’t care for your input. In fact, most people are already listening to music that feels good, or they’re multitasking by listening to the news or watching a movie. Let customers define their environments and find your own strategic place within them.

The one exception: should you choose to incorporate music into your ecommerce solution, make sure to give the consumer the option of playing the music or not. They’ll appreciate you asking first!