The Best Music Options for Museums, Exhibitions & Art Galleries

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Curating Music for Your Curated Exhibit

As a curator, you may want to use an online streaming music service like Spotify or Pandora to get music, and this can be a good place to start. On your personal account, you can find out more about genres or artists who may suit your space. However, you cannot use your personal music streaming account to actually play music in the gallery, exhibition, or museum.

This is because playing songs to the public, especially if they are paying visitors, is considered a public performance of that work. However, there are several services that offer the right licensing to stream music in a business, including a museum, exhibition, or gallery.

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How Background Music Influences Our Feelings, Memories & Bodies

Playing background music is a great way to set the mood of an area. Some studies suggest background music can also improve concentration. These effects occur because parts of the brain respond to rhythm, syncopation, and melody.

Monotonous sounds or even silence might be a good way for museum, exhibition, and gallery visitors to focus, but you might be able to enhance their positive feelings and ability to concentrate with music that has a combination of strong beat and slightly more “chaotic” sounds from other instruments. Music activates both the left and right brain at the same time, adjusting one’s sense of time, space, internal rhythm, and mood all at once.

Conscious vs. Unconscious Systems

The brain has two basic systems that regulate our attention: a conscious system and an unconscious system. The conscious system enables our direct focus on specific tasks, like reading information about the history of a painting. The unconscious system essentially runs in the background, taking in information and bringing only important points to our consciousness.

For example, if someone walks close to you, you will know to get out of their way as you see them in your periphery and hear their footsteps closer to you. Meanwhile, the sights and sounds of other people around you fade more into the background.

Music's Effect on Physicality and Mood

Some studies suggest that the rhythm of background music can lead to physical syncopation. Breathing and heart rate become more aligned as the regular beat of the song affects the subconscious.

Generally, low volume music can fade into the background and not consciously disturb those listening. It only subtly affects their movements and behavior. However, when the mind becomes aware of music, having more than just a strong beat can help improve mood.

For example, a metronome might cause you to move to its rhythm, but when you are aware of just that sound, it can become tedious or annoying. Music like rock, funk, and jazz has enough unusual “chaotic” sound on top of a strong rhythm to keep the listener interested.

Using background music in a museum, gallery, or exhibition not only elevates the mood of your guests and sets the tone for the display you present, but it can also change how guests move through the physical space and how connected they feel to the works presented.

These emotional and physical changes can influence how guests focus on the work, enhancing what they remember of the experience.

Research on Music in Art Galleries

Several studies have been performed on how music influences the experience of visiting an art gallery or museum. The results are interesting, and they could help you to choose the right songs for your exhibit.

One of the first studies of music in art galleries was conducted in 1982. In this study, researchers played two pieces of music and asked people to look at modern paintings. They examined responses when the music played alone, when it was paired with paintings, and when people looked at the paintings with no music.

The researchers found the emotional impact of both music and art were additive. People felt more when they looked at art and heard music at the same time.

In a study conducted in 2020, researchers performed a similar study involving playing music for people looking at art. Sometimes, visitors heard music. Sometimes, they did not. The researchers found that people hearing music were more likely to remember the artwork or the museum. The researchers say the results mean playing music could entice people to visit more often, as they remember the experience in detail.

In a study performed in 2022, researchers played different types of music for people looking at the same painting. They found that people who liked the music they heard tended to like the painting more than people who didn’t like the music. The researchers found that music can influence the underlying experience of visual arts. They suggest playing music is wise.

Best Genres of Music for Art Galleries, Exhibitions & Museums

One of a curator’s most important jobs is to ensure a flow through the exhibition. This could be based on chronological time, allowing visitors to move from the earliest painting to the most recent, or it could be based on theme or art style.

For example, if you are showing Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, or artists from the 1950s or 1960s, playing instrumental versions of pop songs from the time not only sets the mood and tone for the gallery show, but it also gives insight into the pop culture context that might have influenced these artists. In contrast, an exhibit of classical works from the Renaissance or Enlightenment will benefit from gentle, classical music.

Sometimes, opening an exhibition with a live DJ or band, regardless of the artworks presented, can bring in younger people who feel more engaged with a party-like atmosphere. At the same time, this can comment on how the artwork might have been viewed when it was originally created.

Music can be an important component of curating an exhibition, gallery show, or museum area. Use your curatorial skills to think about the music that influenced the painters, the culture around them, and what might set a relaxing or energizing tone for your museum visitors and staff.

How to Match Music Genres with Art Styles

Matching music to art styles is an important part of providing the ideal experience for your visitors.

Follow these three steps to make a smart decision:

Classify your art. Look closely at the art in your exhibition. Would you consider it abstract or realistic? Is it a landscape or a portrait? Is it modern or antique? Consider these labels keywords, and search for artists who write songs with similar tags.
Identify the time. Music is closely associated with nostalgia. Playing music that relates to the time in which the art was created could be appropriate. Find out when the art was made, and search for music recorded at that time.
Name the culture. If your artwork is closely tied to a specific location, or your artist identifies closely with a specific tradition, playing music that’s similarly related could provide a good experience.

Properly selected music could help to guide your visitors through an exhibition. For example, you could play songs by Debussy in rooms filled with Expressionist paintings, switch to The Doors in a room filled with Pop art, and then play mariachi music in your rooms filled with traditional Mexican art. The songs help people to make the switch from one genre of art to another.

Legal Aspects of Music for an Art Gallery

Songs you might like to play in an art gallery are protected by copyright.

When artists record songs, they create two works protected by copyright. They include the sound recording and the materials (such as the lyrics and note progressions) used to craft the work. As the U.S. Copyright Office explains, these protections are in place the moment the work is fixed (or recorded).

If an artist’s work is used unlawfully, that artist can pursue legal action and file a case in federal court. In an art gallery, unlawful use can mean playing a song without permission to do so.

Remedies for infringing copyright can include fines as large as $30,000 per song played. If the court deems the violation is willful, the fines could go as high as $150,000.

To avoid court cases, art galleries should get permission for the songs they play before they play them. Typically, this means connecting with the copyright holder and asking for a public performance license. Paying a fee is often required.

How Loud Should You Play Music?

Most curators play music to enhance the experience of viewing artwork. In other words, the music shouldn’t be loud enough to draw attention away from the artwork.

Sounds are measured in decibels (dBA). The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) says a typical conversation between a few individuals is 60 dBA. This is the same amount of sound a dishwasher or clothes dryer might make while running. Playing music at this level might fade into the background, so it won’t harm your guests.

Signs the music is playing too loud could include people raising their voices to be heard, people complaining about the music, or people holding their hands over their ears.

Options for Purchasing Music for Your Museum, Exhibition, or Art Gallery

When you search for music to play at your gallery, exhibit, or museum, there are several options, but you should focus on companies that either offer royalty-free/rights-free, Creative Commons, or commercial licenses for music.

Here are some of the top music streaming services that might offer what you seek:

SoundCloud: Although this platform focuses on personal streaming services, many songs are published under a Creative Commons license, so they can be free to use in any venue. Be sure to check the individual artist’s information on how they wish their music to be used and how you can get permission to use it.
Yummy Sounds: A smaller music streaming service with a smaller library, Yummy Sounds is one of the few platforms to offer a page of suggestions for museum or exhibition music available through their service.
Epidemic Sound Spaces: Epidemic Sound offers royalty-free music from a huge range of new and unknown artists, focused on content creators who want to sync up sound with their video or podcasts. However, the company also offers a service dedicated to physical spaces, which is a different type of music license.
Soundtrack Your Brand: A branch of the massively popular Spotify service, Soundtrack Your Brand provides public performance licenses for the commercial use of music. You can get access to a wide range of trendy and famous artists and genres of music.
Pandora CloudCover: Operating very much like Soundtrack Your Brand, Pandora CloudCover offers a similarly large music library for a lower price. You can also upgrade your subscription to create your own messaging that will play between songs at specific times, which could be very useful for museums or galleries to alert their patrons to when the exhibit will close for the day.