Blog Post by Steve Hayward, UK Country Manager
I hate Playlists. I think partly the problem is the style of workout that I do. I’m a little too old now to be building big muscle and my passions are running, kayaking and climbing so when I go to the gym, it tends to be for two hours at a time, working endurance rather than gaining bulk.
A couple of years ago I was training for the Devizes to Westminster Canoe race; a 125 mile non stop race from one side of the country to the other in a double canoe. For us it was 25 hours (the quick teams do it in 18 hours!), but we did come in 30 seconds ahead of a pair of Royal Marines, so we were well chuffed.
In training, I switched gym three times. This was entirely because of the music they were playing. It very quickly got to the point where I could predict the next track plus I hate wearing headphones, they are so anti-social. Being in the gym for 3 hours a time 4 times a week gave me a very low tolerance for hearing the same tracks again and again. I have no idea how the staff coped hearing the same songs day in, day out.
It’s for this reason when I heard about how the Gymmusic Pin2 Music Streaming service works, I loved the concept from the start. They have a huge library, but instead of picking up individual books, you can grab entire aisles, whole sections!
The Gymmusic Pin2 music streaming service DOESN’T use Playlists. We use technology combined with a specialist team of highly experienced music experts. If you own or work in a gym here’s some things to think about when making your playlist.
Making a Playlist takes time. This costs you money, you are effectively paying someone to put music together and even then, you need to maintain the lists you have made. Updating Playlists takes even more time. This is time you should be using to keep your clients happy!
Anyone can make a Playlist, very few people can make a GOOD playlist. If your gym has 100 clients working out, the likelihood is that only one person will like the music that’s playing; the person that made the playlist! Fact is that most gyms are run by guys. Guys play guys music. It’s all very well having a playlist that keeps the big guys who like to lift happy, but how is that Skrillex going to work out for the two nervous newbies who have just arrived in your gym for the first time? Will they be back?
No matter how big your Playlist, you will always hear repeats. This is because of the way that Playlist random play works. Many services and particularly MP3 players don’t keep a track of which tracks have already played, this means the laws of chance are at play for you to hear the same song twice in a row. A very annoying interruption to your work out.
Playlists are static. This means if things change in your gym in terms of the clients needs, you are stuck with the tracks that are in that list. With Pin2 from Gymmusic you can meet your client needs in a second, increase the overall tempo in seconds. Want something rockier, slower, more pumping, just change the dashboard settings and the technology finds the tracks to match your needs. Our highly experienced music team makes sure that you get the right balance of music to give something to everyone.
We measure the BPM of each track. Beats Per Minute gives an insight into the tempo of the track and enables us to understand the workout ‘power’ in each tune. It also enables us to cue up tracks next to one another that have a similar BPM which means your workout stays seamless and the music doesn’t have any jarring tempo drops. It also enables you to select the range of intensity that you want to match the activity going on in the gym. Our competitors do not do this.
I hate Playlists. But I love Pin2.