BWS to target its customers’ musical tastes with Pandora in-store streaming

Liquor retailer, BWS, is rolling out Internet radio services across its Australian stores, which play songs based on the musical tastes of customers living in particular postcodes.

Internet radio service, Pandora, has started streaming ‘locally-curated’ music stations for each BWS store, which includes Dan Murphy’s, Cellarmasters, and Pinnacle Liquor.

These stations play songs that Pandora users in each postcode enjoy listening to. This is expected to enhance the customer experience and ultimately, result in an uptick in sales for the retailer.

The service – dubbed Pandora for Business – will be rolled out to 71 BWS locations across New South Wales starting with stores in Quakers Hill and Rouse Hill this week, Rick Gleave, director of business development at Pandora Australia and New Zealand told CIO Australia. It will then be rolled out across hundreds of stores throughout the country.

Pandora has partnered with Mood Media, a provider of in-store customer experience solutions, to roll out the service. Mood provides stores with a media player that enables them to stream Pandora music and slot in radio advertising between songs, he said.

The service is driven by Pandora’s Music Genome Project, a hand-built musical taxonomy. Up to 450 distinct musical characteristics are analysed by a trained musical analyst.

According to Pandora, these attributes capture the musical identity of a song and the significant qualities that are relevant to understanding the musical preferences of listeners.

The Music Genome Project’s database is built using a methodology that includes the use of precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control to ensure that data integrity remains reliably high, according to Pandora.

It does not use machine-listening or other forms of automated data extraction, the company said.

Gleave said Pandora was overlaying data about the current listening habits and likes of Pandora listeners in the postcodes around each BWS store with demographic information provided by the retailer.

“This gives us a very good indication of the sorts of music people are going to want to listen to in these different stores. It doesn’t stop there, we’ve got very aggressive 12 month marketing plans for each year of this contract – it’s a three-year deal,” he said.

“And we are going to look at redefining that sound over the course of that relationship.”

Meanwhile, BWS-branded radio stations will also be made available to stream for all Pandora users, which extends the experience beyond the store, Pandora said.

This is Pandora’s first entry into the Australian retail market since the company launched here two years ago. Since then, Australians have streamed 190 million hours of music using the service.

Gleave said the organisation was speaking to other retailers in Australia but declined to name them.

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