The surprising reason why Aldi doesn’t play music in stores

Picture this: you’ve walked into an Aldi Australia store and are pushing one of their coin-deposit trolleys as you peruse the aisles.

But something is missing from the grocery shopping experience – can you pinpoint what it is?

Unlike other major Australian supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths, Aldi stores don’t play any music over their speakers.

That means, no Michael Buble crooning as you grab some milk or humming along to Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Miss Independent’ while loading up your trolley with grocery items.

And it seems there’s a simple explanation behind why the supermarket chain decided to forgo ‘muzak’ – AKA background music.

‘You won’t hear music playing in our stores, but we hope our customers are singing praises about the savings,’ an Aldi Australia spokesperson told FEMAIL.

‘By skipping extras like in-store music, we keep things simple and pass those savings straight to our customers.

‘It’s all about making shopping easy, efficient, and affordable.’

An Aldi Australia spokesperson confirmed to FEMAIL that it was a deliberate decision to not play background music in stores

The spokesperson added: ‘We’ve always said we do things a little differently.’

Any retail business – including grocery stores like Woolworths and Coles – are required to hold a public performance license to play background music.

In Australia, these licenses are purchased from company OneMusic, which is a joint licensing initiative of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS) and the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA).

The licensing fees collected from retail businesses are used to pay musicians and artists, who own the copyright to their songs.

Exactly how much a licensing fee costs a retailer is dependent on the business’ floor space – and in a major supermarket, the area is sizeable.

A spokesperson for APRA AMCOS previously told Yahoo Finance that the music license for a major grocery store could run into the thousands – and that price would be paid for each individual store.

 Coles and Woolies respectively have around 850 and 1,100 store locations.

These fees would be factored into the grocery store business’ bottom line and absorbed into their product pricing strategy. This presumably translates into higher product prices for shoppers.

It begs the question as to why the major grocery stores don’t follow Aldi’s lead and give background music a miss.

However, a new study released in March 2025 offers insight into why retail businesses persist with muzak.

The ‘Music Impact Study’ done in partnership between music technology company Audoo and German performing rights society GEMA, found a clear link between the use of background music and an increase in revenue.

It found that music played in a retail setting had the potential to increase sales by ‘an average of 8 per cent’.

This was similarly the case in dining settings like café and restaurant settings, where background music equated to ‘an average 5.4 per cent’ sales increase.

This report also echoed previous studies around the way background music influenced ‘customer behaviour, customer retention and spending positively’.

Despite the research suggesting background music enhanced the shopping experience (ultimately resulting in customers spending more), there are numerous Reddit threads dedicated to praising Aldi for not playing tunes in stores.

‘The last time I was in Aldi it was pretty empty and the quiet was so nice. I imagine the employees appreciate it too,’ one said in a Reddit thread.

‘As someone who has worked at a bigger grocery chain before that played the typical grocery store radio music, it was actual torture,’ another shared.

‘I love that my Aldi doesn’t play music. I can shop at Aldi in peace, a welcome change from noise overload everywhere else,’ one added.

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