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Hard rock is not as hard as it once was. A new system that sends music into Hard Rock Cafes via the internet means the chain of themed music cafes can ensure no songs with explicit language get played.
Paul Farah, e-commerce fulfilment manager at Hard Rock Cafe International, expects more restaurant chains and retailers to centrally control their music so it reflects the company's image, and music can be paid for more efficiently.
Companies can also use particular songs to gee up staff when they're running behind. For example, the Village People's YMCA is a favourite at Hard Rock for speeding up kitchen staff on busy days.
Under the old system, the general manager of each cafe chose music on a PC linked to a CD changer that could take 250 CDs. Managers could play what they liked, though they were meant to exclude tracks unsuitable for family dining.
Today, they can't play their favourite Eminem CD all day long. The new system is also less time consuming. Instead of having to pick a CD, then the tracks they want to play and which tracks they don't, managers just go to Hard Rock's intranet (in-house internet) site.
They get a choice of music genres, such as rock and Florida Rock (such as Britney Spears and N Sync) and current music. When they select one, a list of tracks stored in a database at Hard Rock's Orlando, Florida, office will be played.
Farah says: "Sometimes I'm talking to the London cafe and Britney Spears is singing Oops I did it again in the background, while at the same time I sit near the Florida database and I can hear it played here."
For a new song to get to London, the song and its video must be downloaded on to the Florida database, from where it will be sent as an MPeg over the company's virtual private network to the London internet server. The song will be tagged with the name of the appropriate playlist and will be blasted out through the speakers when that playlist is chosen.
London (and other) servers poll the Florida database every minute to see if there is new music available, but most songs get downloaded between midnight and 4am, when the network is less busy.
When a cafe is to start using the system, a Cisco internet server with 700 songs and videos on it from the Florida database is shipped. A TV outlet is connected to each server so the videos can be broadcast simultaneously on the cafe's 30 or so screens.
Because the MPeg video and audio files are large, it would cost too much to send each song over the network every time it was requested, says John Osowski, an engineer at Hard Rock.
Cafes in different time zones won't necessarily be playing the same music at the same time. And in US Bible Belt areas such as South Carolina, or the mainly Mormon Salt Lake City, a so-called G-rated selection of music can be played. It is also possible to get cleaner versions of some songs, with expletives from live shows bleeped out.
Osowski reckons it costs around $6,000 to equip each site but says that despite the cost of sending songs around the world and shipping the servers, the system is good value.
The company no longer has to buy as many CDs or CD changers, though its cafes now keep a DVD player that can play music and videos as a back up. And because individual songs can be downloaded from the net, it does not have to pay licence fees on whole CDs when it wants to include just one song in a playlist.
The Florida database also provides a list of all the songs played on a given day so the company does not overpay on royalties.
It opens up other possibilities, too. For example, the company could add the music that is playing in each cafe to the virtual tours it offers on its website. Or it could netcast a Hard Rock Cafe radio channel on its site, in a virtual equivalent of what UK high street chain Topshop achieves by having a DJ in its store.
"There are more companies doing this kind of thing than people realise. Gap pays a fee to Muzak, which pipes in music, and it can insert commercials into its playlist," says Farah.
According to the Hawaii-based Brand Strategy Group: "Muzak, the company known for 'elevator music' has partnered with thousands of companies to find out what their businesses sound like. Sonic identities are really important."
Farah is happy with Hard Rock Cafe's identity, and feels the main benefit of central control is that it knows what is being played at any given moment and gets no complaints about explicit content.
