Can you believe we’re already over halfway through 2023? We’ve seen a new King crowned, Liverpool hosting Eurovision, the sad death of the legend Tina Turner, and many other memorable moments already.

We’ve been pretty busy at Startle working to make our customers happy - we wanted to take some time to blow our own trumpet (music pun intended), if that’s okay.

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Atmosphere Monitoring 

We've focused for years on the importance of background music on influencing behaviour and mood. But the choice of music is just one piece of the puzzle when creating the perfect atmosphere. 

That’s why in February, we launched our Atmosphere Monitoring product. 

This exciting development gives you invaluable insights into your retail or hospitality environment and allows you to automate powerful changes to your atmosphere. From automatic volume changes to playlist adaption and relevant signage, the tiny sensor provides you with data on busyness, temperature, energy and local weather to give you an accurate idea of what’s going on inside your venue. 

We’re very proud of the product, and we can’t wait to watch it continue to help brands feel more informed and provide the perfect environment for their customers. 

To find out more about Atmosphere Monitoring, head here. 

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Atmospheres that Sell Book Launch

Creating something as deeply subjective as a store, cafe or restaurant atmosphere without a strong understanding of human behaviour is silly. That’s why behavioural science is at the core of everything we do.

So, in June, we launched the world’s first behavioural science book specific to the retail and hospitality industries, Atmospheres that Sell - Using Behavioural Science to Create Branded Atmospheres in Retail & Hospitality. 

Stacked full of useful information, examples, and thoughts about how to run your sites more like an extension of your brand and marketing function, a critical tool in achieving your commercial objectives. 

If you’re not already familiar with what behavioural science is or where it comes from, you’ll probably find the first chapter helpful (no spoilers). But beyond this, just dig into the chapters that sound interesting to you as each one will take a single insight and explore how it may be helpful to retail and hospitality businesses. 

To get your hands on a copy, head here.

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Nudgestock 2023

If you follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter, you might have noticed us mentioning Nudgestock 2023. 

Nudgestock, part of MAD//Fest, is the world’s biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, attracting all with a thirst for knowledge and an appetite to understand the human animal. So, of course, we had to be a sponsor.

But this wasn’t any ordinary sponsorship. As well as providing music for all areas of the event, carefully curated with behavioural science in mind, we challenged attendees of the event to join us in an epic showcase of air guitar skills. 

We had limited stock of our exclusive air guitars, but luckily our rockstar Tim was on hand to oversee the performances (even joined for an epic one by Rory Sutherland).

The day was a blast - to find out more, head here. 

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Startle stats!

Care for some fun statistics? 

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Technology

Besides our tech team working hard every single day to ensure our customers are happy and fixing any bugs, they’ve also been cracking on with some exciting projects. 

Towards the end of 2022, we launched our new and improved Schedule. These changes were designed to improve functionality, tackle existing customer challenges and make the Startle experience better for everyone involved. Rolling this out has continued into 2023, with some of our biggest customers now really making the most of the up-to-date features. 

Behind the scenes, real-time updates have been a big improvement on our side, as our music and player information now updates in real-time (or as close as we can get it). Although it’s not noticeable to the customer, it’s been an under the hood project to help make everything run smoother for you. 

And looking forward, our tech wizards are working hard on making the Startle experience even better for customers. Focusing on incremental UI updates to Studio including redesigns of some pages (you’re going to love our new playlist previews and management section), they’re hell bent on improving consistency and ease of use, so keep an eye out for more snazzy changes in the coming months. 

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Best New Artist goes to...

We’re so excited about some of the new brands we’ve started working with this year, and we want you to know you’re in good company. 

Amongst other exciting brands we’ve helped Lush to standardise their music offering, Mitchells & Butlers to bring their customer experience up to date, Total Fitness to have music with energy, Belushi’s invest in technology that really works for them, Jaguar Land Rover to have the perfect playlists all over the world, and Farmfoods to have a delicious soundtrack.  

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Phew! That's a lot for 6 months or so. We're so excited to see what the rest of the year holds.‍