Does the Owner of Your LGS Allow You to Play Music?
General forum
Posted on Nov. 12, 2022, 12:22 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
I have been a regular customer of a game store for over two years now, and one of the primary reasons for which I have remain there for as long as I have is that the owner is a very nice person who is usually very calm and relaxed and who is not too strict about what he allows his customers to do. Most notably, he has no problem with me playing music from a portable speaker, which is great, because I enjoy having music to help provide an entertaining atmosphere.
However, the owner of the store recently informed me that other customers had been complaining about me playing music, so he had to ask me to stop doing that, and I obviously complied, but I was not happy to do so. Since the owner himself has no problem with it, I asked why he was giving preferential treatment to the other customers over me, and he responded that there were several customers who were complaining, and he did not wish to lose them, which really added insult to injury, from my perspective. This is not sufficient to make me leave that store and seek out another one, but I still find it to be very annoying and unfair.
What does everyone else say about this? Does the owner of your LGS allow you to play music, and has anyone ever complained when you have done so?
I don't know your game store, so I'm speculating, but your comment that "he was giving preferential treatment to the other customers over me" has a lot to do with the plural customers. One person complaining might not change anything, but multiple complaints will prompt action. Is it fair of the owner to ignore multiple people (other customers) to satisfy one person (you)?
As a couple of questions, how loud or quiet was your music? Do you ask the people around you if you could play music? Do other people play music?
I'm not trying to get on your case, but I don't really see anything unreasonable on the owner's part.
November 12, 2022 12:56 a.m.
Honestly, this has never come up in any of the game stores I have ever played in, likely because it is kind of inconsiderate as heck for someone to even think to bring their own speaker to the game store.
It is rude to those who don’t want another player’s personal taste in music forced upon them. It is rude to the game store owner who could hypothetically incur liability due to rights issues with playing copyrighted material in commercial settings. It is rude to those who are already trying to have their own conversations and don’t need extra background noise as a distraction.
It would be one thing if the store owner wanted to play music - that is their choice and their liability, and if players don’t like it, they can go elsewhere. But having a player be making that decision to force their noise on the rest of the store? Yikes.
Your store owner was wrong to let you in the first place and everyone else absolutely has the right to complain. And, let’s be honest, by the time they complained to the owner, they probably dropped plenty of clues they wanted you to cut off the music (be it annoyed glances or maybe more active hints) that you must have missed - that shows a pretty serious lack of empathy that kind of fits with your having decided to do this in the first place.
Then we get to your third failing - the incredibly conceited way you responded to your LGS owner. You, selfishly, thought that the owner putting the wants of the many over your own individual wants was “preferential treatment” when that’s decidedly the opposite of what he did. It was “preferential” to allow one person’s desire for their own music to be inflicted on every other player - that was weighting your wants over the wants of everyone else, which is, by definition, “preferential treatment”.
From doing something that is pretty obviously rude in the first place, to missing the fact that others were upset, to trying to defend yourself in a self-centred and incorrect manner, you failed at every step. Frankly, you owe the other players and your owner an apology.
November 12, 2022 1:01 a.m.
wallisface says... #5
Yeah I'm siding with everything Caerwyn said above. This post all sounds incredibly inconsiderate on your part - People shouldn't have to be subjected to your music preferences, and are right to be able to complain about this. If anything, the store owner is in the wrong to have let you blare your music in the store at-all to begin with.
Note also that it isn't "unfair" that you aren't allowed to play your music - it's more "unfair" for you to blare your music at the expense of multiple other peoples sanity. It sounds like you're putting your own wellbeing above the wellbeing of multiple other people, which just wreaks of rudeness.
I'm struggling to comprehend how you wouldn't know your behavior to be inappropriate to start with. This thread is all very hard to fathom.
November 12, 2022 5:31 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
legendofa, I was making an effort to not play it very loudly, only loud enough so that I, who was sitting next to the speaker, could hear it; yes, I would always ask people who were sitting in close proximity to me if they would be bothered by my music, and they always said that they had no problem, so the people who complained must have been people whom I never asked on account of the fact that they were not sitting close to me; no one else ever played any music, so I thought that I could fill the silence with my own music. However, you are correct when you say that the owner was being perfectly reasonable, and, as much as I do not like to admit it, he had the right to ask me to stop playing music. Thankfully, he is now playing movies on a television set to provide background entertainment, so that does help to soften the impact of me not being able to play music, any more.
Caerwyn, I confess that I had never even considered all those points that you are making, and they all are excellent points, but none of the customers ever said anything to me about my music, or, if they did, I did not notice, but I accepted the owner's decision, so I do not believe that there shall be any further issues.
wallisface, I was not "blaring" my music, to use your word, I was deliberately keeping it at a low volume, so that only I could hear it, but I suppose that I my definition of a low volume may not have been the same as that of the other customers.
I also would like to mention that I play at that store only one day out of the week, and I am not even there every week, sometimes, I go there only every other week; I will not argue with the owner about it, but the fact that it was only a rare occasion for me to be present with my music playing is rather frustrating.
November 12, 2022 9:56 a.m.
Dead_Blue_ says... #7
I think you already get the point so no need to drive the nail further down but yea I’ve never been to any game store where bringing in your own music was even aloud
November 12, 2022 10:33 a.m.
I am not sure I agree with Dead_Blue_'s assessment that you get the point - your post is not an acknowledgment that maybe you were in the wrong, but three different defenses of your own actions. While you acknowledge that you might have been in the wrong, there is a lot of your trying to defend your actions, qualifying your realizations with "but"s (showing you are shifting the blame away from you and onto others), and notes that you are still frustrated even as you seem to acknowledge you have no real right to be frustrated.
Just something to keep in mind--it is not really enough to just know you were probably in the wrong, you need to internalize the reasons why you were mistaken. The way you responded still was very much about yourself and very much not about having empathy for the other patrons. Since this is not the first time you have made a thread on this site where you do not seem to "get" how others might view your decisions at your LGS, doing some introspection and trying to work on your own ability to see things from others' perspective might be some good for your personal development.
(Also, unless your game store owner is playing films in the public domain or has obtained the rights to play the films commercially, that's not exactly a great decision on his part).
November 12, 2022 11:58 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #9
That's not preferential treatment. If you're trying to do something that affects other people, having you not do that isn't favoring them; it's retaining neutrality. Additionally, you really don't want to be "that guy" at the LGS. Many, many people hate noise pollution, and the request to avoid it isn't forcing you to do anything.
Personally, I would not attend a store that had/allowed music playing. It's loud and chaotic enough with the ambient noise. I abhor noise pollution, especially when it's avoidable.
November 12, 2022 1:26 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #10
Caerwyn, I am almost afraid to ask, but when have I previously not shown any regard for other people at my LGS? And the owner was playing the original Star Wars trilogy on Disney+, but no one was complaining about that, from what I could determine.
Grubbernaut, you are quite correct that I do not wish to be "that guy" at the store where I play; there was another regular customer whom the others disliked because he was very condescending to other players and frequently gloated when he won games, and I can certainly understand why people would not be fond of such behavior.
Actually, another comparison is that I severely dislike drivers who play their music in their cars obnoxiously loud when they are driving, so I suppose that some of the other players may have perceived me in the same way as people perceive those drivers, and I certainly do not wish for other people to see me as such a person.
November 12, 2022 2:54 p.m.
I recall a while back you being flabbergasted that folks might be upset about bringing an erotic playmat to your game store, even though that is fairly obviously something one should not do.
Also, as I said, the owner making a decision to have ambient noise is different from you, a player, making the decision.
November 12, 2022 3:08 p.m. Edited.
Cool topic. Thanks for the discussion.
I would say that I have had multiple successful sessions that included playing music on my boombox. They were all during midnight prereleases. I would ask the owner, and usually give a shout out to the playing space asking permission as well. It always went over well, and I even forgot my speaker once and people asked me what the heck?
I would say this was sort of unique in the sense that I would mostly play it during the pack-cracking and deck-building portion of the sealed prerelease, or getting towards like 4am when people needed a motivator. I worked for Schwan's at the time and would bring in individual ice cream cones and treats for everyone and hand 'em out around ~2am and ~4am. I tried to really motivate the midnight releases to keep head-count up back then since it's one of my favorite formats. (Do they even do midnight's anymore?!)
I can't say I see music much at the multiple LGS in my area. The table that has the music, however quiet it is, tends to be the loudest when they're talking over their own entertainment. If it's commander night or something I'd probably plan to leave the music at home, but if it's just open game time with only your group there, that seems more likely to be accepted.
November 12, 2022 3:16 p.m.
I mean... there’s always headphones or earbuds, right?
November 12, 2022 4:11 p.m.
Jeepers Caerwyn do you want DemonDragonJ to be hooked up to the electrodes for being so horribly, irrevocably wrong? Maybe renounce all values? Listen to "Everything you know is wrong" by Weird Al?.... Anyway, DemonDragonJ, you probably are on the wrong side of a issue of the public on this one :)
Part of the same reason I just kitchen table it up :)
November 12, 2022 8:37 p.m.
Honestly, if someone like you was at my LGS, I would be looking for a different one between the music, your porny playmat, and just generally how you seem to interact with the world.
Infact I stopped playing at one LGS because it seemed full of men like you.
November 13, 2022 2:33 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #16
"I disapprove of the way you interact with the world" I say, in a post that serves no other purpose than to shame someone anonymously online /rolleyes
The LGSs with well-visited events I've been at, have a people-background noise level loud enough to not be able to play music at any sound level that would not be rude to the other customers. In my LGS, the owner plays radio or a playlist of his own choosing, although I barely notice because people playing Magic en masse are pretty loud. Music also distracts me from interacting with my opponent. Which is why I've never even thought about bringing a portable speaker, also because my taste in music is peculiar and alternative enough to chase people away.
The only acceptable instances of playing music inside LGSs that I've seen, was D&D dungeon masters accompanying their adventures with specific story-appropriate sound clips, and even that is usually distracting other tables. Although there's more goodwill for it, because the purpose of enhancing the entertainment is undeniable.
November 13, 2022 6:44 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #17
The owner may have no issue with your music, and may even like it. But the owner of the store is in the business to make his CUSTOMERS happy, not "you". You are not his only source of income. If your actions / behavior compromise the experience of others, your actions or behavior will be brought into question. Regardless of if he likes your music or not.
November 13, 2022 8:37 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #18
Conversely, I attend an LGS where one of the employees will occasion blast their music loud enough that I can be heard throughout the store. If you ask them to turn it down, he will tell you to just leave the store.
Yeah. This is the same one as all of my other horror stories are from.
November 13, 2022 8:44 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #19
You know, and I do apologize for the triple post here, but I've been reflecting on something DemonDragonJ said, where you have the speaker next to you and you turn it up just loud enough for you to listen to.
I hate to sound so rude and disrespectful, but is it possible you may have bad hearing? Because what could seemingly sound quiet to you, may actually be quite loud to others - especially if your hearing is not as healthy as it could be.
And while I understand it'll be tempting to just proclaim your hearing is good, you also aren't subjecting it to anything other than a personal bias. Of course your hearing is good, because YOU can hear, right?
But has it ever been evaluated? Measured? Because if you are tone deaf (literally), you may be turning your music up just high enough for YOU to hear it, which could in all actuality be very loud for others.
Additionally, I'd be interested in hearing what music you listen it. It could simply be the fact others find it offensive. For example, rap music tends to lean heavily into dialog that many parents with young children may not want to be played around them. Similarly, there is a vulgarity behind death metal that is far more of an acquired taste, that while it may not be disturbing in words, it's irritating in composition. Then, of course, there is simply the idea not all people enjoy the same kinds of music. I personally don't mind country. I'm not a fan of it, but I won't change the station if it comes on, either. However, some people absolutely abhor it.
I actually worked with a guy who was a music major, who out right despised Rock-'n'-roll. Citing how it is a "dead genre" that needs to just stay dead.
Yeah, not all major attendees are as sophisticated as you might expect.
November 13, 2022 10:12 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #20
Caerwyn, yes, I recall that, now, but rest assured that I never made a playmat with erotic artwork, because I decided that it would not be worth the trouble of doing so.
greyninja, I am very glad to hear that the customers at the store where you play appreciate you playing music, so it seems that the crowd is different at each store.
Gleeock, plakjekaas, TypicalTimmy, I do understand that the owner of the store must appeal to a large number of customers, so, despite the fact that I am not pleased about this turn of events, I shall accept it; it is not as if the owner banned me from the store, so this is something that I shall need to accept.
And, if anyone was wondering, I was playing mostly rock and heavy metal music, such as the Beatles, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and so forth, so I would prefer to believe that the customers were not objecting to the particular bands whom I was playing, but the mere fact that I was playing music, at all.
November 13, 2022 1:16 p.m.
wallisface says... #21
DemonDragonJ while i’m also a big fan if most of the bands you've listed, they’re far from “popular”, and many could find them offputting/offensive-to-the-ears. Its probably “more likely than not” that people had a problem with the bands themselves (in addition to the fact that music was being played at all).
November 13, 2022 1:29 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #22
wallisface, that would be a very disappointing fact to learn, if it is true.
November 13, 2022 1:36 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #24
TypicalTimmy, I am very glad to hear that, and I certainly have plenty of other options for enjoying it, beyond playing it at a store.
November 13, 2022 1:51 p.m.
I'm pretty eclectic. Love Blues Traveler: 'The Hook' with some incredible harmonica. Like some Grunge, Cranberries were underrated. Mazzie Star: 'Fade Into You'. Punk is sweet (I'm ok with pop-punk, but more plain old punk). I love, Ramones: 'Bonzo goes to Bitburg' I am in love with the idea of Ronald Reagan teaching morality to a chimpanzee. David Bowie is my guy... pretty much anything Bowie. Lou Reed. The Killers have so many bangers, my favorite being: 'All These Things That I Have Done' & my wife's being 'Read My Mind'. The Electric Six were a heavier Electronic Funk Rock style, I love seeing my son jam to 'Danger High Voltage' & '3-2-1 I'm The Bomb' is incredible for commander.
November 13, 2022 3:18 p.m.
I also love playing context-appropriate music from a playlist because it is comical. I renovated my Gazebo to be able to do stuff like that :) . Blue's Traveler has a song called: 'The Mountains Win Again' - which can be pretty hilarious if I am dominating with . Or Cranberries: 'Zombie' has found its way to the table a few times.
November 13, 2022 3:28 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #27
Gleeock, when Kaldheim was released, I played music by Amon Amarth and Ensiferum, as those two bands are heavily associated with vikings.
November 13, 2022 4:41 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #29
DemonDragonJ, do you have an MTG playlist?
And what would you suggest for The Brother's War?
November 13, 2022 8:16 p.m. Edited.
TypicalTimmy says... #30
My "preferred" genre is basically rock from the 70s - 90s. That said, I find comfort in essentially all music from the 60s all the way back, including classical. I don't really enjoy the more "mechanical" and "commercialized" music of the 2000's.
I also absolutely love satire / comedy music. A lot of people know of Weird Al, but one of my favorites is actually who he was inspired by; Tiny Tim.
That style of singing is called a falsetto voice, which I can actually do. That high-pitched shakily singing? Yes, I can do that. One of my (few) talents.
November 13, 2022 8:26 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #31
Gleeock, yes, I definitely am very fond of Led Zeppelin.
TypicalTimmy, I never thought of making an MtG playlist before, but that is an interesting idea, and I definitely think that Dead Bodies Everywhere by Korn and War Pigs by Black Sabbath would fit the tone of The Brothers' War. And I have heard of Tiny Tim, although I am only vaguely familiar with him.
November 13, 2022 8:33 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #32
I wouldn't say Tiny Tim revolutionized music, nor was he an iconic staple. For his time, parody music was not really a thing. In fact, when Weird Al started off, it was considered insulting to be asked if he could do a satire of your work. One of Tiny Tim's more famous works is Tiptoe To The Gas Pumps, a take on Nick Lucas' Tiptoe Through the Tulips
Today, it is considered a musical honor to be satired by Weird Al Yankovic.
But, Tim does hold a special place in many hearts. He was ahead of his time, and unfortunately passed far too soon.
November 13, 2022 8:36 p.m. Edited.
A bunch of the stuff in Spongebob Squarepants is Tiny Tim inspired
Icbrgr says... #2
I think for the context of the story I side with the store owners and the anonymous complainers (personally i'd find music annoying/distracting)...kinda like outside food/drink or smoking/vaping or using proxies there are certain settings and groups where it works and others where it doesn't.
From the owners perspective its tough to "be the cool guy" and try to please everyone... and from time to time reluctant enforcement of discretion is necessary for keeping the peace/maintaining cliental... it sucks to have to "slap the wrist" of a regular customer but likewise it's still a public venue.
November 12, 2022 12:49 a.m. Edited.