December 3, 2025
Is Holiday Music Tormenting Retail Associates?
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, humorist Joe Queenan railed against music blasting inside grocers and other retailers, with the torture seemingly doubling down during the holiday season.
“It gets really bad at Christmastime,” one employee staffing the pastry counter at his local grocer told him. “I have to wear earmuffs.”
Queenan’s column particularly focused on the retail staff that find themselves “brutalized by loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music” throughout the year. While store managers often take the blame, one manager told Queenan that it’s “corporate’s” decision to play music at high volume.
Other articles have explored the impact, on retail employees, of repetitive and loud holiday music playing in stores over the final months of the year.
A Wall Street Journal article from 2022 cited at least three petitions on Change.org seeking to ban Mariah’s Carey’s 1994 holiday hit, “All I Want for Christmas is You,” from being played on the radio, citing it as “the bane of shoppers, retail workers and pedestrians.”
Speaking to Bloomberg, Elizabeth Margulis, a professor and acting chair at the department of music at Princeton University, said holiday music follows an inverted U-curve for listeners. Tunes initially benefit from nostalgia as they’re heard early in the holiday season, but eventually irritate due to repetition. She said, “There’s this point where it turns around and starts going down the other side.”
A 2017 survey from Soundtrack Your Brand, a music streaming platform for businesses, found a quarter of retail workers agreeing that too much Christmas music makes them less festive, with 16% indicating it impacts their work environment negatively.
Holiday Music Not Necessarily a Bad Thing for Retail Business, Though
Regardless, several other surveys find shoppers looking forward to holiday music.
New research from Critical Mass Media and iHeartMedia found 90% of consumers are more excited to shop when they hear holiday music playing, with 83% indicating that hearing holiday music on the radio is the signal that it’s time to begin their holiday shopping.
A study conducted last year by Mood Media revealed that almost 80% of shoppers are aware of holiday music playing in a store, 75% say it enhances their shopping experience, and 42% admit that listening to Christmas tunes leads them to browse longer. Only 6% reported feeling irritated by holiday music.
An article in Psychology Today confirmed that “music affects the way we think, feel and act, which has considerable consequences for our wallet. This is especially true in a retail environment. When the music we hear is enjoyable, our positive emotional state colors our impression of our surroundings. We evaluate the merchandise more favorably. We view the sales personnel as friendlier. And the happier we feel, the more likely we are to remain in a store, explore our surroundings, and find something we want to buy.”
BrainTrust
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Mohamed Amer, PhD
CEO & Strategic Board Advisor, Strategy Doctor
Brad Halverson
Principal, Clearbrand CX
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Does the benefit to sales from playing holiday music in stores offset the aggravation and stress it causes for retail associates?
Is holiday music more of a positive or negative to the retail shopping and working environment?
Poll
Loading …
The friction around Holiday music for retail associates and customers is an old tradition. For some, the repetition is like fingernails on chalkboards. But this frustration can be reduced by corporate teams allowing store teams more flexibility to change holiday music genres and decades, or installing a dayparting system. Forcing a tightly wound brand of repetitive holiday music on stores just isn’t worth it. Going even farther, let the store teams listen to non-holiday music before store opening and after close.
Sorry, Joe, but being forced to listen to “loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music” can happen at any time of year. Mariah’s Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, personally makes my ears bleed, but it is what it is. Now, get off my lawn.
Playing Christmas music in-store is a holiday tradition that puts people in the mood to shop and it’s not going anywhere. I worked the sales floor for years, and like everyone else in retail, I learned to tune it out.
Yes, I am sure holiday music does drive some associates mad – especially as some stores play the same-old tunes on repeat. The problem is that a lot of customers like holiday music and it helps to create a vibe and to drive spending. As such, I cannot see stores abandoning this any time soon!
Holiday music clearly works for customers. They don’t spend the hours that associates do in the store. However, retailers should consider treating associates more than ambient fixtures for the sake of higher conversion. What good are store associates if they are numb to the “mood” or worse, to those happy customers?
I believe that while the holidays can indeed be a stressful time for retail associates, the festive elements — including in-store music — aren’t the root cause of that stress, and in many cases may provide a calming or mood-lifting backdrop that helps both customers and staff. Research indicates that playing holiday music can enhance the shopping experience: many shoppers report feeling more comfortable, nostalgic, and inclined to linger — factors shown to boost dwell time and even increase spending. When music evokes positive feelings, it can soften the pace of the store and ease the transactional pressure on associates during one of retail’s busiest seasons.
Of course, music isn’t a cure-all. Poorly chosen playlists — too repetitive, too loud, or out of sync with store type — can annoy both shoppers and staff. There’s evidence that if holiday music becomes relentless or overly repetitive, a notable portion of employees feel less festive, fatigued or overstimulated. But I believe those are symptoms of a broader problem (staffing levels, workload, holiday-related customer pressure), not the music itself. In many cases, a well-curated, balanced holiday playlist can act as a gentle mood-steadying tool — especially if employers recognize the need to manage volume, rotate selections, and respect shift-based exposure.
In short: holiday music — when done thoughtfully — tends to be more of a positive ambient influence than a negative stressor. For retailers, the opportunity is to treat music as part of the seasonal experience architecture: use it to enhance mood and environment without relying on it to carry the weight of customer satisfaction or associate morale. If holiday stress gets addressed at the root (workload, staffing, service design), the festive soundtrack becomes a helpful companion — not a culprit.
Yesterday at a shopping concourse, I noticed a more joyous atmosphere precisely because of the in-store holiday music. Ideally, the festive multisensory experience attracts shoppers, so store teams can focus on delighting them and tune out the carols.
More Discussions
How Can Retailers Improve Shoppers’ Sense of Closure When Concerns Emerge?
How can retailers better provide closure and proper resolution to today’s shoppers?NRF 2026 Rewind: Abercrombie’s CEO Shares Leadership Lessons
In a session at the NRF Big Show, Abercrombie & Fitch Co.’s CEO Fran Horowitz shared…Is the Luxury Department Store Facing Extinction?
Are luxury retail stores expected to go the way of the dodo?
The friction around Holiday music for retail associates and customers is an old tradition. For some, the repetition is like fingernails on chalkboards. But this frustration can be reduced by corporate teams allowing store teams more flexibility to change holiday music genres and decades, or installing a dayparting system. Forcing a tightly wound brand of repetitive holiday music on stores just isn’t worth it. Going even farther, let the store teams listen to non-holiday music before store opening and after close.
Sorry, Joe, but being forced to listen to “loud, idiotic, or culturally discordant music” can happen at any time of year. Mariah’s Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, personally makes my ears bleed, but it is what it is. Now, get off my lawn.
Playing Christmas music in-store is a holiday tradition that puts people in the mood to shop and it’s not going anywhere. I worked the sales floor for years, and like everyone else in retail, I learned to tune it out.
Yes, I am sure holiday music does drive some associates mad – especially as some stores play the same-old tunes on repeat. The problem is that a lot of customers like holiday music and it helps to create a vibe and to drive spending. As such, I cannot see stores abandoning this any time soon!
Holiday music clearly works for customers. They don’t spend the hours that associates do in the store. However, retailers should consider treating associates more than ambient fixtures for the sake of higher conversion. What good are store associates if they are numb to the “mood” or worse, to those happy customers?
I believe that while the holidays can indeed be a stressful time for retail associates, the festive elements — including in-store music — aren’t the root cause of that stress, and in many cases may provide a calming or mood-lifting backdrop that helps both customers and staff. Research indicates that playing holiday music can enhance the shopping experience: many shoppers report feeling more comfortable, nostalgic, and inclined to linger — factors shown to boost dwell time and even increase spending. When music evokes positive feelings, it can soften the pace of the store and ease the transactional pressure on associates during one of retail’s busiest seasons.
Of course, music isn’t a cure-all. Poorly chosen playlists — too repetitive, too loud, or out of sync with store type — can annoy both shoppers and staff. There’s evidence that if holiday music becomes relentless or overly repetitive, a notable portion of employees feel less festive, fatigued or overstimulated. But I believe those are symptoms of a broader problem (staffing levels, workload, holiday-related customer pressure), not the music itself. In many cases, a well-curated, balanced holiday playlist can act as a gentle mood-steadying tool — especially if employers recognize the need to manage volume, rotate selections, and respect shift-based exposure.
In short: holiday music — when done thoughtfully — tends to be more of a positive ambient influence than a negative stressor. For retailers, the opportunity is to treat music as part of the seasonal experience architecture: use it to enhance mood and environment without relying on it to carry the weight of customer satisfaction or associate morale. If holiday stress gets addressed at the root (workload, staffing, service design), the festive soundtrack becomes a helpful companion — not a culprit.
Yesterday at a shopping concourse, I noticed a more joyous atmosphere precisely because of the in-store holiday music. Ideally, the festive multisensory experience attracts shoppers, so store teams can focus on delighting them and tune out the carols.