Scheduling guide
How to schedule background music for morning, lunch and evening
Most venues play one playlist from opening to closing. Here is a simple way to give each part of your day its own sound — and to make the changes happen without anybody having to remember them.
By the Tunelay teamPublished 7 min read
Why one playlist rarely fits a whole day
Walk through your venue at eight in the morning, at one o’clock and at seven in the evening, and you will probably see three different places. The guests are different, the pace is different, the light is different and so is the noise level. Music chosen for one of those moments is usually wrong for at least one of the others.
The common workaround is someone changing the playlist by hand when it feels wrong. That works on a good day. On a busy day nobody remembers, and the evening starts with the morning’s music — or the morning starts with whatever was left on from the night before.
Scheduling music by daypart simply means deciding in advance what each part of the day should sound like and letting the system make the changes. It takes an hour to plan and then saves a small decision every day.
Step 1: map your real day, not your opening hours
Start with a sheet of paper and your opening hours, then mark where the day actually changes. Don’t think about music yet. Think about who is in the room and what they are doing.
A café might find four moments: the commuter rush, a calmer late morning, a laptop afternoon and a slower evening. A restaurant usually has lunch service, a quiet gap and dinner, with the bar living its own life later on. A bakery may have just two: a busy morning and a quiet afternoon before an early close.
- When do the first guests arrive, and how quickly do they leave?
- When is the room at its busiest, and how loud is it then?
- When do guests stay longer — to work, to talk, to relax?
- When does the day start winding down?
- Do weekends look different from weekdays?
Step 2: give each part of the day a mood
For each block, describe the atmosphere you want in a few words before you choose any music. “Awake but not pushy” for a morning queue. “Low-key and steady” for an afternoon when people are working. “Warmer and slower” for the evening. Those words are easier to agree on with your team than a list of artists.
Then match each block to a mood or playlist. Keep the number of different moods small — three or four is plenty for most venues. Too many changes in one day make the music feel restless, and they make it harder for staff to know what is supposed to be playing.
Energy usually follows how busy the room is. A full room can carry more rhythm and a slightly fuller sound; a half-empty room feels better with something lighter. Volume follows the same logic, but keep conversation in mind: if guests have to raise their voices, the music is too loud, whatever the time of day.
Step 3: time the changes
Put the change slightly before the moment it is meant for. If dinner service starts at six, switch the dining room to the dinner mood at a quarter to six, so the room already sounds right when the first table sits down.
Make transitions gentle. A crossfade, where one track fades out while the next fades in, makes a mood change feel natural instead of abrupt. In Tunelay you set it per playlist, from none up to twelve seconds, with six seconds as the default. Calm venues such as spas and yoga studios tend to like the longer end; busy venues are fine with shorter fades.
Remember the ends of the day as well. Decide what happens before opening while the team sets up, and make sure the music stops when you close. Tunelay goes quiet outside the opening hours you set, with a ten-second fade, and staff can choose Play anyway if they need music during an early prep or a late clean-up.
Step 4: plan for weekends and special days
Weekends often start later, peak at a different time and run longer. Rather than squeezing them into the weekday plan, give Saturday and Sunday their own blocks in the weekly schedule.
One-off days — a holiday, a private event, a late opening for a local festival — are best handled as date exceptions: a change that applies to one date and then disappears. With several venues, an exception for one location should never change the others.
- Weekly schedule: your normal week, day by day.
- Location exception: one venue does something different on a regular basis.
- Date exception: one day is different, then everything returns to normal.
Step 5: agree what staff can change
A schedule works best when the team trusts it and still has a way to react. Agree on a few simple rules: staff can pause for a delivery or a speech, skip a track that doesn’t fit, turn the volume down when guests ask, and switch to another approved mood when the room is unexpectedly busy or quiet.
In Tunelay those controls sit on the tablet, a mood switch lasts until the next scheduled change, the volume can’t go above the maximum you set for the zone, and every action is logged. Settings and unpairing need a four-digit manager PIN.
Step 6: test for two weeks, then adjust
Treat the first schedule as a draft. Listen at each change point for the first few days, ask the team what feels wrong and watch how often they skip, pause or switch moods. Frequent manual changes at the same time of day usually mean the schedule is wrong at that moment, not the staff.
After two weeks, move the change times, swap a mood or adjust the volume limit, and leave it alone again. Most venues end up with a schedule that only needs revisiting when the seasons, the menu or the opening hours change.