If you have ever read anything about music and retail, you have encountered the Milliman study. Ronald Milliman, 1982. Grocery store. Slow music produced 38% more sales than fast music. It is the most cited finding in the field. It launched an entire category of research. It is on every pitch deck for every retail music company that has ever existed.
It is also more complicated than the headline suggests, and the complications matter.
What Milliman Actually Found
Milliman ran the study in a single grocery store. Slow tempo versus fast tempo. The slow condition produced longer visits and higher total sales. The 38% number is real. The study was well-designed for its era.
But it was one store, in one market, with one customer base, in 1982. The question that matters for anyone trying to act on it forty years later is whether it replicates.
The answer is: partially. The dwell time effect replicates reliably. Slow the tempo, people stay longer. That finding has held up across grocery, restaurant, and general retail contexts for decades. The sales effect is murkier. When researchers have scaled up (more stores, more controlled conditions, more rigorous measurement), the direct tempo-to-sales link weakens considerably. A 2025 study across 140 stores found no overall sales effect from tempo alone. A 2024 restaurant study found tempo controlled dwell perfectly with zero effect on spending.
The 38% number was probably real in that store, for that customer, at that time. But it was probably not caused by tempo alone. Something else about the slow music in that store, in 1982, aligned with that customer base in ways that the study did not measure and could not isolate.
Why Does the Milliman Study Still Matter for Retailers Today?
If the Milliman finding were the whole story, every retailer would just slow their music down and collect the revenue lift. Some have tried. The revenue lift does not reliably appear.
The reason it does not appear is that tempo is one variable in a compound signal. Slowing the tempo changes the arousal level. But it does not change the mode, the harmonic language, the production era, the groove feel, the vocal character, or the cultural associations of the music. If all of those are wrong for the customer, a slower tempo just produces a longer exposure to the wrong music.
The original Milliman study captured a moment where the slow music happened to be right for the customer in more ways than just tempo. The field has spent forty years citing the tempo finding without asking what else was right. That question — what else was right — is the one worth answering. It is the question Entuned is built to investigate.
Related reading: Tempo Controls Your Customers' Bodies. It Does Not Control Their Wallets., The Science of Tempo: How BPM Controls Retail Behavior, and What Are Musical Flow Factors?
Key Takeaway: Tempo is not a preference — it is a measurable driver of pace, dwell time, and spending. The Milliman study proved this in 1982, and the principle has been replicated across retail formats for four decades.
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