There's no single best playlist for a restaurant. The best music for 8am is wrong at 9pm. Here's how we think about each part of the day when we build playlists for Brisbane venues. Tempo ranges are in beats per minute (BPM) and are a starting point, not a rule.
Breakfast (roughly 7am to 11am)
Warm, unhurried and familiar enough not to distract. Think acoustic soul, gentle funk, bossa nova and easy indie. Around 80 to 100 BPM. Keep the volume low: people are reading, working and waking up.
Lunch (roughly 11am to 3pm)
A little more lift. Lunch rooms are busier and turn tables faster, so the music can move: light disco, soulful house at low volume, Latin and modern soul. Around 95 to 112 BPM. The room is louder, so the music can sit slightly higher, but still under conversation.
Afternoon (roughly 3pm to 6pm)
The handover from lunch to evening. This is where many venues get it wrong, either staying in lunch mode or jumping to night energy too early. Build gradually: balearic, downtempo, nu-disco and feel-good soul. Around 100 to 115 BPM.
The afternoon handover is where most venues get it wrong: stuck in lunch mode, or jumping to night energy too early.
Dinner (roughly 6pm to 9pm)
Richer and more atmospheric. Jazz, soul, downtempo electronica and deeper cuts that suit the room's concept. Around 90 to 110 BPM. Dinner is about conversation and lingering, so resist the urge to build energy too fast.
Late night (9pm onwards)
Now the room can lift. Disco, house and classic dance records, rising steadily towards the busiest hour. Around 115 to 124 BPM. If you run DJs on weekends, this is the slot they take over, and the playlist should hand over to them smoothly.
Themed and concept venues
A Mexican cantina, a Japanese izakaya and a 1950s cocktail bar shouldn't all sound the same. A themed venue needs a music policy built around its concept, whether that's cumbia and Latin funk, city pop and Japanese jazz, or swing and rhythm and blues. Done well, it's one of the cheapest ways to make a fit-out feel complete.
A few rules for every part of the day
- Long playlists (around 150 tracks), so songs don't repeat in a shift
- Fresh tracks every week
- Explicit lyrics filtered off unless the concept suits them
- Volume set per part of the day, not by whoever's closest to the speaker
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Playlist curation