so Muji is this Japanese series of retail outlets with a fair number, if not density, of stores internationally. Their primary gimmick is that none of their products have any printed branding on them, which is pretty neat, but the thing I think is really cool is that Muji has a full original soundtrack.

Actually - kind of a lot of it?

It seems almost excessive - though, I think part of the point is that they will of course sell you the soundtrack on CD, and an associated wall-mounted CD player if you need one of those.

Regardless of everything else that Muji has going on¹, the idea of in-store music that's actually made to be store music is something I think definitely should be applied more widely. Pretty much anything else would be an improvement over the current meta of mostly pop music. Not that I have anything against pop music itself, it's just that being played over the speakers in public places doesn't seem like the correct sort of place for it. Look, one time I was in a store for the entire duration of this song and, despite not listening to it before or since this incident, the chorus continues to burn brightly in my mind and occasionally get stuck in my head unprompted. I think this song is actually cognitohazardous. Stores can definitely do better than this.

This makes me think about how much more pleasing store music is in video games, which tend to have some sort of "shop theme" which conveys the specific mood of their own in-game stores. Okay, one song per store works in video games because you're probably not going to be in there for more than a few minutes, which is not the case in the real world. Though, I do wonder what sort of store might be able to get away with just playing the "shop theme" tracks from various game soundtracks (and if that would actually be good?).

Muji went out of their way to commission music, but this is probably a bit much to ask of the average store. If there was some sort of repository of proper "store music" out there, which was meant to actually fit the - wait, that's just Muzak, isn't it. Okay, maybe not an original idea at all, but even if it's meant to subliminally influence you to buy more or whatever I think a return to form might be better than the alternative.

(or maybe they could just turn the music off for once. that might be nice.)

1. heartbreaking: you're about halfway through writing something semi-positive about a company and then notice the words "forced labor" on their Wikipedia page. style != morality, I guess.