Progressive Mix

May 17, 2010 4:49 PM

If you were creating a "work mix" of public background music on Pandora or Last.fm or Slacker for a laid back, progressive retail environment, what artists would you include?

The customer demographic is mostly middle-class age 18-45 outdoorsy types shopping in a mom&pop outfitters retail store. Need to be careful of nsfw lyrics, but otherwise most anything goes. We've been doing this for awhile, but we're looking to add some new material to the mix.

posted by netbros to media & arts (13 answers total)

Iron and Wine
Bon Iver
Josh Ritter (esp. the new album)
Aqualung
Dawes
The National
She & Him
posted by jbickers at 4:54 PM on May 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Bjork actually works oddly well on Pandora if you steer it a little bit towards more vocal vs instrumental stuff. It'll start throwing out Nina Simone and all kinds of other stuff.
posted by internet fraud detective squad, station number 9 at 5:20 PM on May 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Post-rock would probably work well. As a bonus, most of it's instrumental.
posted by kindall at 5:55 PM on May 17, 2010

jbickers's list, plus Vandaveer.
posted by headnsouth at 6:24 PM on May 17, 2010

Royksopp.
posted by xbonesgt at 6:29 PM on May 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Cat Power. Broken Bells. Fleet Foxes.
posted by msali at 6:46 PM on May 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm in your target demographic and I like shopping to any kind of Brian Eno.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:46 PM on May 17, 2010

Pandora has a no-profanity mode.
posted by NoraReed at 7:10 PM on May 17, 2010

This thread has some good suggestions.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 7:21 PM on May 17, 2010

I don't think you're supposed to do this... sorry to rain on your parade.
posted by TimeDoctor at 12:35 AM on May 18, 2010

Solo guitar is good for this- John Fahey, Leo Kottke, James Blackshaw are great.
posted by saul wright at 3:23 PM on May 18, 2010

Nick Drake is one of the few artists that doesn't make my co-workers want to strangle me when I play music at work. He's also pretty popular with outdoorsy types. Also agreeing with Fleet Foxes.
posted by troublewithwolves at 8:37 PM on May 18, 2010

I'd be careful of doing this in a retail store, ASCAP and BMI send people around looking for businesses that don't buy a license.
posted by yohko at 7:34 PM on May 19, 2010