Many businesses want to sound fresh, current and contemporary to reflect their vibe and brand. However, keeping up with contemporary music trends presents a challenge. That can be a tough challenge when modern music—especially the chart-toppers—is rife with expletives in their lyrics and song titles. Foul language may not be a problem for individual listeners listening on their own device. However, businesses have unique needs in terms of their image and what they want their customers to hear. So, if your business wants the sounds of today’s pop, hip-hop, and R&B hits without risking the bad language, here’s how you can get clean music for your business.
Lyrics Today Reflect How People Speak and Feel
A recent Billboard Hot 100 contained 43 songs flagged as EXPLICIT! When nearly half of the most popular songs in the U.S. are explicit, it’s going to be tough for businesses to play today’s hits. Tough to find a balance between staying current and staying appropriate. Fortunately, Custom Channels is staffed with professional music curators who know exactly how to navigate new releases. We know how to craft playlists that keep a business sounding new and up-to-date without tripping up on bad lyrics. With the right experience, the right tools, and the right process, current music can be clean music.
It’d be easy enough to write off explicit songs as unusable. Skip ’em. That’s a shortcut many services and owners/managers are happy to take—even when it means dumping half of today’s most popular songs. We can do that easily for any playlist. But even worse, some music services, don’t bother avoiding explicit lyrics at all. That can happen especially with consumer music services that aren’t designed or licensed for business. Those services opt to just play unedited music that isn’t appropriate for families or business environments.
How Explicit Songs Can Still Be Kept On the Playlist
A quality music service will put in the work to find radio edits and “clean” versions of those songs. That often requires time and a strong relationship with the record labels. Producers and record labels understand the value of creating and offering edited, clean versions along with the original explicit, unedited version. They know the F-bomb and s- word still offends a large number of music lovers young and old. So, we seek out the official, artist approved edited, clean version of songs whenever we can.
We have another method of dealing with explicit songs here at Custom Channels. We sometimes take the time to craft our own clean edits of certain songs when the label doesn’t offer that option. That ensures our music-for-business clients never have to choose between new music and clean music for their business. They can have both – the hot new hits without being offensive.
Some Lyrics Can Be Inappropriate Without Being Explicit
Just finding or editing explicit song lyrics into clean versions doesn’t get us all the way to having clean music for business. There are plenty of examples of song lyrics being inappropriate without using any explicit words. Many popular songs old and new are off-limits for certain businesses because of the themes and content. Suggestive, sexual, aggressive, or violent lyrics are a turn-off to some. Alcohol and drug references sometimes cross the line of acceptability for some businesses. Examples of those businesses would be an orthodontist with lots of young patients, a retail shop that has family customers of all ages, or a restaurant that just wants a mainstream image. Those kinds of inappropriate (for that business) song lyrics, while not officially explicit, can be filtered in even more detail by our professional music curators. That extra effort is to make sure that the music channel meets that client’s particular need for clean music.
At Custom Channels, our music curators have all of the tools and experience needed to collect and create clean versions of songs tagged as EXPLICIT. And we have the know-how to screen songs even further for more nuanced profanity and inappropriate themes. In short, businesses no longer have to choose between the kinds of music they want to play and the level of “cleanliness” they want their customers to hear.
What music and lyrics are best for your business’ brand, customers, and environment? You can trust Custom Channels to make sure that you get clean music for your business, without sacrificing quality or variety.