Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better. One of my favorite perks of podcasting is the incredible people I come into contact with, especially when I get to continue a connection with them and their work after our interview is over and the episode has been released. Usually that connection ends up being through social media, since we’re all busy and geographically spread out. And for all of its downsides, social media does have its upsides, and this is where it really shines, in my opinion, is in its ability to help us maintain and strengthen connections with amazing people who we otherwise would lose contact with. Today’s guest is one of those people. Those amazing people that I’ve been able to keep up connections with. Pavle Marinkovic was a guest on this show in 2021, discussing his book, How to Hook Your Customer With Music. That book explored the strong influence that background music has on what we buy and how much we’re willing to pay for it, and also address the growing field of audio branding for businesses. I’ll put a link to that conversation in the show notes. Since then, it’s been so fun and enlightening for me to stay connected with Pavle on LinkedIn and to benefit from his prolific writing. He does a lot of writing that spreads the word about the power of music. If you haven’t already connected with him on LinkedIn or followed his newsletter, I highly encourage you to do that. Pavle has worked in multiple capacities in the last many years in the music and neuroscience realm. As a consultant, he’s also worked in the audio branding field. He, in addition is a music teacher, film composer and award winning writer on topics related to marketing, music, psychology, science, and future trends in business. Welcome back to Enhance Life with Music, Pavle.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:02:02] Well, thank you for having me once again.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:04] I’m so thrilled that you’re here again and that you’ve recently completed another book, especially since it’s on a topic that is really intriguing and one that I don’t see a lot of other people writing about. It’s on the subject of the effect that music can have on our entire food cycle, from crops to animals to consumption and beyond. I love the title: “Sounds From Farm to Fork and Back: How Audio and Music can Enhance the Food Life Cycle. And in the book, you break the food life cycle into four stages food production and distribution. Second stage is food selling and purchasing, third stage is food preparation and consumption, and the final stage is food waste and cycle renewal. And in today’s conversation, we could easily talk for 30 minutes about each stage, but we’re going to try to keep it to higher level. Just talk about the whole book in its entirety and the 30 minutes that we have starting out. Can you just talk a little bit about the first stage and some of the research that you found the most fascinating, or that you think listeners would be the most surprised to learn about that first stage, how music can enhance food production and distribution?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:03:24] Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s amazing to see, as you said, that we have these two sources of nourishment, you would say food for our physical body and music, which is food for our soul, but we never think to mix them. Right. We have farmers might listen to music while they work. You know, supermarkets put background music, we eat while we listen to music, but that’s just scratching the surface of this. Bond music has practical applications for each of these stages, and it appeals to a wide variety of readers. So for this first stage, farmers, gardeners, even agricultural engineers will appreciate it mostly. And then other professions might prefer reading another stage. So consider this first stage, which includes cultivation, harvesting, raising of crops, livestock and other animals to produce, you know, row of food materials. They are then transported to supermarkets for selling. So this is the first stage. And I gathered some interesting data to know. First, you know what’s happening today in this stage. So here a key two key things from 2019 to 2022. There’s been like 156% increase in the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity around the world. So these are people that they don’t have enough food to meet their basic needs. Well, why climate change, wars, supply chain disruptions. And then you have agricultural productivity, which was also declined by 34% in Africa due to climate change. And this is the region in the world that has declined the most. And, you know, I could go on. Message is clear. You know, we need to implement innovative and better agricultural practices, uh, because we have to ensure that there’s enough food for everyone, and we have to get creative. And here’s where, you know, you can put sound and music and why music? Well, first, because it’s widely available. It’s cost effective, it’s eco friendly. There are no side effects. So how many tools can say the same? Yeah. Um, well, and I love.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:26] How you point that out in the book is how music. I mean, we’ll get to this later, but it’s low cost, is easily accessible, and we don’t have these side effects because huge shortage and food insecurity has been around since the beginning of time to some extent. But a lot of the ways of addressing it that we’ve come up with have made the environmental challenges worse and human health worse, because we’re using pesticides and we’re using genetic modifications that maybe the human body is not quite prepared to digest. As easily. And so some of these effects that music can have on this stage are so they show so much potential and so much promise because they don’t have those side effects. Exactly.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:06:11] We need this balance. And it’s also important that you can use it in a wide scale or just locally, you know, in our own home gardens and farms.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:21] Yeah. And you mentioned earlier too, how these recommendations and tips and methods that you address in your book could be used for farmers, but also restaurant owners, bar owners. And I love the practical recommendations that you give at the end of each section for each of those different kind of stakeholders. And you kind of point out, okay, if you’re a bar owner, here’s what you might some of the takeaways you might want to consider from the information presented in this section, or if you own a restaurant, or if you’re a farmer, or if you’re a home gardener, a chef, you know, a store owner. These are the practical takeaways from this content for you to consider. So I just want to point that out.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:07:01] Yeah I mean every chapter every stage has its own audience. So for this one, the first one, there’s some cool experiments that, uh, gardeners and, you know, these green thumbs people can enjoy. So, for instance, this is one, uh, in 2014, there was a group of Indian scientists that compared how rose plants react to different types of music throughout their development. These rose plants were exposed to 60 minutes of music at 6 a.m. for 62 days. A lot of sixes and a group of plants were listening to devotional Indian music, Vedic chants. Others were listening to Western classical music, and some had rock music through loudspeakers. So after 62 days, the results were fascinating. When Rose listened to Vedic chants, they grew taller and developed a higher number of flowers and a larger in size.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:55] And that was listening to what music.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:07:56] To Vedic chants, devotional Indian music. Okay. And then they even grew towards the speaker, towards the source of music, as if they couldn’t get enough of it.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:07] Wow.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:08:08] Uh, but, uh, on the other side, when they listened to rock music, their flowering size and frequency were the lowest, and they were the first to sprout thorns and had more of these thorns than any other plants in the experiment. They were like trying to defend themselves.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:25] Wow.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:08:26] And there was a similar behavior in the terms of growing in the sense away from the speakers. They were trying to put as much distance between them and the speaker. Wow. So one research after another shows the same, uh, sadly for these fans of these genres, rock, heavy metal and similar genres are detrimental to the growth of different types of plants.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:52] So it’s not enough to just play music for plants. I mean, you have to know what kind of music is going to positively impact their growth and the nutrients that they’re producing, that type of thing.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:09:04] Yeah, they have preferences just as we have. Um, and why would that happen with, uh, why why are they so against these genres? Well, scientists are unsure. There’s not a consensus yet, but there’s some working theory that these genres create more intense sound waves and vibrations. And this could mess up with their peace of mind, or they create more stress that plants can’t handle very well. So, as you said, we need certain types of music that they really work. So these are some tips for the gardeners. So we have uh, if you want to increase the plant growth, uh, you would use genres like classical music, devotional music in this case the Vedic chants, soothing music. You should also use, uh, moderate to low volume, up to 80dB. And you should use put the music for up to three. Hours per day for at least four weeks. That’s around how much they usually use them in this research. So we’ve seen first that music can enhance plant growth, but there are other things that can that music can do. One of those is the resilience towards pests. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:10:18] That was fascinating to me. I mean, the music can cause the plants to produce more nutrients and it can influence a plant’s height, the number of leaves and flowers, the flowering time, the germination speed and crop yields, but then also its resistance to diseases and pests. But keep going. I mean, that was it’s all so fascinating.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:10:41] Yeah. I mean, uh, the growth also is paired with more health. Uh, there was like an experiment in Korea that focused on the music’s capacity to stimulate plant resistance to disease and pests. And this was a two year long study. They would use three music conditions on different vegetables. So you would have a radish, Chinese cabbage, spinach, carrots, cucumber. And they would use pre music conditions. One was green music which would be a mix of classical music with natural sounds. Um think about birds, insects, water flowing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:16] Yeah.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:11:16] There was another music condition with ultrasound, which is sounds that are above 20 zero zero zero kilohertz. And then the third condition, no music at all. And they would put music for three hours each day from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and in those two years, they found that the vegetables listening to green music had 18% higher yields than the other two conditions.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:42] Wow.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:11:43] And then both music conditions showed fewer insect pests compared to the no music group. In a way, music was enhancing plant health and the resilience, and it kept pests away. And this is not something new, um, when it comes at least to ultrasound, because it has been used to repel rats, plant hoppers and birds without disturbing humans.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:08] Yeah, that’s so fascinating. And going back to your, um, explaining the problem at the beginning of our conversation where we do need to increase crop yields to reduce world hunger. This is such a great way to a great tool that we can use to help with that.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:12:25] Exactly. Dissuades all these, uh, different insects and animals to be nearby these crops.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:32] Yeah. I thought it was really interesting. You mentioned in the book that there’s historic evidence that shows that music was used by indigenous societies around the world, and I think there were multiple factors involved, multiple reasons that they used music. But I think one of them was because they saw some kind of beneficial result with crop yields and resistance to diseases and pests. Is that right?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:12:56] Yeah. I mean, uh, music has been around for ages and they would discover that there’s some kind of link that also pertains other areas of our lives, like food. And then there’s also another thing that’s, uh, like the elephant in the room that everybody or many people know about, which is, um, you know, cows giving more milk after listening to relaxing music.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:13:19] That’s something you always hear about.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:26] I don’t feel like people do always hear about it. Like, I, I hear about it because I follow your newsletter and follow you on LinkedIn, but I don’t feel like that. That’s something that everybody’s talking about. Maybe in Europe it is more well.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:13:37] At least the media learned about this back in 2001.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:41] Sure. And I should mention, I don’t think I included this in your introduction, but you’re joining me from Madrid, Spain, right now.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:13:49] Yep. I’m in Madrid. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, uh, there there have been, uh, several studies on this with cows with, uh, you know, different, um, well, when it comes to cows, uh, it’s very interesting. There was one study in 2006. Cows were listening to Indian classical music. I guess many of these studies come from East Asia. Okay. And that’s why you hear so many, you know, devotional chants. Because I think they’re more open to this kind of, uh, studies. Sure.
Mindy Peterson: [00:14:17] And they’re more common genres in that area of the world.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:14:21] Well, when it came to Indian classical music, they saw that, uh, the cows were producing 13% more milk on average. Wow. So the music would start ten minutes before milking them, and then it would continue until the process was over. Mhm. And it was also interesting that there was one more thing, uh, behavioral, uh, cows were more willing to approach the milking system, you know, that the, this can a little bit be noisy and threatening, but with music for them it was easier to approach. And, you know, people that work with them, it’s easier to handle them when there’s music around. So it probably.
Mindy Peterson: [00:14:56] Took less time to get them, you know, all. Situated to begin the milking process, just because they are more willing to approach.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:15:03] Exactly. Cows were more docile with music, and even workers enjoy their work more. Because there was music around. So it’s like a win win situation, right? Yeah, yeah. From these studies they would see that the cows like Beethoven music. They liked country music, uh, Simon and Garfunkel. So they have like pretty specific tastes. So you have more milk, less stressful environment. And workers enjoy their job more, sir.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:30] And you get more milk in less time.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:15:33] Exactly. The thing is that there’s one one more thing, but it’s not a win win situation. It’s, uh, with, uh, broiler farms. So in this case, well, the the chickens have a better life, but. Well, they’re killed at the end. Uh, but the interior, if you’ve been in an interior of these houses where they have all these chickens piled together, the noise is pretty loud. Stressful. It gets up to. I was reading somewhere. It was 90dB, which is like a roaring motor cycle 26ft away, I think.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:16:07] So it gets very stressful for these chickens. And one study was putting classical music intermittently, like one hour on, one hour off. And they found that it reduced the stress of chickens. They would go eat more and they would increase their weight by up to 15% more than the control group, which didn’t have music in an eight week period.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:29] Which decreases the time that farmers are paying to feed the chicken and saves in feeding costs. And I believe another study showed an increase in egg production too.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:16:42] Uh, this other company, Happy Egg.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:47] I love the name of the company.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:16:48] Yeah. Uh, but they’re more focused on providing a better environment for their hands. One of these tools they use is a sound enriched environments. They even created their own album for hens that any farmer can get at their SoundCloud.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:03] And yes, they had it commissioned. Right?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:17:04] Yeah. And in this case, the increase was 6%. So the the model was like happy hens make more happy eggs.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:12] Love that. Well, I’ve got to think too that when music is reducing the stress for the animals, whether it’s chickens where we’re eventually consuming the meat or we’re consuming the eggs, or with cows where we’re eventually consuming the milk or the meat, I would think that lower stress experienced by the animals would result in more nutrient rich product, because you’re not having all of those, whether it’s adrenaline or whatever it is that the animal is producing. I imagine that there’s something negative that ends up in the final product that we’re consuming. I don’t think that was part of the study necessarily, but it would be interesting to find out if that is the case. Yeah.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:17:53] I mean, there’s toxins that are released when these animals are in stressful environments. And this also gets into the meat into into the products they give us. So without that it’s much better. It’s a much better quality and healthier for us as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:10] Sure. Tell us a little bit about how sound. So this isn’t necessarily music, but sound ultrasound is being used to reduce food waste, because that was another part of the book that I found really fascinating.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:18:22] When it comes to reducing food waste. There’s, uh, Jillian, how do you call this like a new innovation system that they have? Yeah. Uh, which they use ultrasound to detect the quality, the ripeness of fruits so they can penetrate these different layers of the fruits without harming them. And you can know beforehand if, if it’s ready to be harvested or you have to wait a little bit longer. And they had this system when they would process a lot of fruits. I don’t know the rate per second, but, uh, they.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:59] I hadn’t written that in my notes. One fruit per second just because I thought it was. I’m like, okay, that’s great that it’s pretty quick. So one fruit per second.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:19:08] Yeah. And from that they can know if it’s ready to be, you know, transported or cut from the trees. So it’s another way to reduce the amount of waste that ends up because you didn’t take care of which type of, uh, fruit was already ready to be harvested or not.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:29] And with a 93% level of certainty, which seems very accurate to me. And it’s non-invasive, so it’s not damaging the fruit at all. So again, just a really great way without any side effects to reduce food waste.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:19:44] Exactly. Yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:45] And also, I think that ultrasound was used in some sort of a nebulization system that could inhibit fungal growth, which also reduce the need for chemicals by up to 40%. So another great use of sound. In the food production process. Yeah.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:20:02] And that’s why the book is called Sounds and Music, because sometimes it’s not about the actual complex music or genres or rhythms. It’s more a more simpler way of taking sound, uh, as a tool for these different applications.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:20] Yeah. Now stage two, I mean, like I said, we could spend an entire 30 minutes just on each of these stages. But for stage two, I know that some of this material builds on what you talked about in your first book, How to Hook Your Customer with music. There’s a little bit of overlap on the topics, but it’s addressing that, that second stage food selling and purchasing, and you talk about how music really can influence how much time we spend in venues like restaurants or bars or food stores, whether it’s a grocery store or a wine store, things like that. Um, it also can the music can also influence how much we spend during the time that we are there and how much we’re willing to spend per item. So all of that really fascinating. Um, you do build on some of that material in talking about how music versus no music can impact some of these consumer behaviors, other musical attributes like volume, tempo, how familiar customers are with the music, what genre it is. That was really fascinating. Anything that you want to mention on this stage that you want listeners to know before we see if we can hit stage three? Also.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:21:38] Yeah, before 1970s, uh, nobody cared about music as an element influencing purchasing behavior. So it’s important to take consideration, you know, that this is a very new way of using music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:53] And you mentioned Philip Kotler in your book. And I was like, oh my goodness. That takes me back to my marketing classes in college. I remember using one of one of his books was one of the textbooks and one of my classes.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:22:05] Yeah, the guru of modern marketing. And he introduced the idea of atmospherics. And that idea was that different sensory channels, uh, smell, sight, hearing could influence consumers. And he even thought that these atmospherics could be more influential than the product itself. So sometimes the context is everything. So while I was working in this audio branding firm, Sound City, I had to interact with different companies and see how to use music to enhance their message. Whether it was, you know, an ad, sonic logo, corporate song. And one thing became clear there that audio creates an immersive experience for the consumer. So you could think about the following things. Uh, there’s a certain craving when you hear the pop of, uh, Coca Cola can when you hear the crunchiness of chips, if it’s louder, it’s like, even tastes better, you know? Uh, and much more so.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:02] And that study, of course, was using Pringles.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:23:05] Yeah. Of course you have to. You have to sell the brand. And you said something about, um, you know, the time spent in grocery stores. So the initial studies in this area, uh, were from the 80s, and they saw that slow tempo music could increase people’s time spent in grocery stores to up to 38%. Music would change your your walking pace, usually unconscious. Or sometimes you might stay longer at certain aisle and you don’t know why. And the idea was that if you spent more time inside the store, you were more likely to purchase more products. And what kind of music does it trick? There were some certain features. Low volume. You had to have music with low volume, uh, slow paced music. Thinking about this, walking, uh, in a slower pace to be able to see more products, uh, the music has to be familiar to the audience, and it has to have a simpler structure, which is. So those are.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:02] All attributes that cause people to spend more time in the venue, is that right?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:24:06] Yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:07] Okay.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:24:07] But also sometimes you want people to stay shorter and when you want that, you use fast and loud music. And this is usually what’s used in bars if they know how to use music strategically because you have you want people to have have the drinks leave, have new customers in. And you know when the music is loud, people will drink more because they’re not. There’s no way you can hear each other talk.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:31] And that is a great segue into the next stage, actually, because you tell a story in the book about the first time that you realized music affected people’s food habits. And so this third stage is food preparation and consumption. But tell us quick that story of how you first realized the effect that music had and how that plays into what you’re starting to talk about with bars and restaurants and how the speed of music affects.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:24:59] Consumption and would play at bars and restaurants. As a musician, I would play violin there usually, and we had a varied repertoire with some slow songs and some fast, cheerful songs, so I would sometimes glance at the audience while we played and I would start to realize something, you know, whenever we played Balkan and klezmer music, which is very energetic, people would renew their drinks more often. Uh, you know, they will not to the music, uh, they will seek the waiter more often, but then with the more intimate repertoire, they would take longer to drink. And it wasn’t something they would do consciously. They were just adjusting their behavior to their surroundings and in this case.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:39] Automatically without thinking about it.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:25:41] Yeah. And music was helping make that shift. So that was the first time I realized that there was a link.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:46] Uh huh. So if people, uh, own a bar, play fast music loud, and that’s most likely to get people to be drinking more and drinking faster and refilling their drinks more. And if you’re a consumer and you’re trying to restrict how many calories you’re taking in, then be aware of this when you go to bars. If they’re playing fast paced, energetic music, you might be more tempted to refill your drinks more often.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:26:14] Exactly. And you’re not paying attention. And you’re just, uh, anxious trying to consume more.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:19] Yeah, well, you mentioned in the book, too, that low volume has been shown to increase the sales of healthy food products, which I find I’m a whole sort of a health geek. And so that really caught my attention to like, oh, interesting. If you’re a manager at Whole Foods or you’re at a store that’s selling healthy foods or restaurant selling healthy foods, that low volume can allow people to probably be more aware of what they’re eating and just enjoy the process and and not be so distracted by the loud, fast music, but to be more mindful of what they’re consuming.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:26:58] Exactly. You want to them to be thoughtful about what they’re purchasing. Uh, what are the ingredients? The calories. Uh, so low music, low volume music allows them to take the time to do those conscious decisions.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:13] Yeah. One other thing that I found so fascinating in this stage that you talk about in the book is how other sounds affect our senses of taste. You talked about how in an airplane you asked, did you ever think, notice that airplane food tastes funny? And I just kind of laughed because I love food. But airplane food, yeah, yeah, like, that is one thing I do not care for. But you talk about how the planes low buzz sound affects our sense of taste. It enhances bitter and umami tastes and diminishes sweet and salt tastes. And then you kind of talk about some of the other sounds and music attributes, like high pitched notes that can affect sweet and salt tastes. And then I love that story that you tell about how you applied that research to a chocolate sound taste experiment. Tell us about that.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:28:10] Yeah, I was reading about how music would change the perception of taste for beer, for wine. And I said, well, let me try it with the chocolate because I love chocolate.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:28:23] And there’s a really nice vegan chocolate factory in the middle of Madrid. I actually went there one day, and it was funny because I started talking to the owner and I heard some Serbian in the background. A woman was talking on the phone and I said, oh, this is Serbian because I’m from Serbia. And he said, like, oh, this is my wife. So it was very cool to find another Serbian in Madrid.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:50] Oh, sure. Yeah. Wow. Cool.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:28:50] And this family, this lovely family had the this opened recently. This family, I mean, this factory. And, um, I asked them, what’s.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:00] What’s the name of the chocolate factory? We’ll give them a shout out here. K a i c a o?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:29:09] Yeah. It’s got, uh it’s named after their, their son. Okay. And they would do tours, uh, inside the the chocolate factory to show how the chocolate was made. And they would, uh, give the people to try different types of chocolate. People would do this tour, they would taste different chocolates, and then they would come to, uh, my station and I had, uh, two bowls of, uh, pieces of chocolate, one next to each other, and they would take one bite from one while they were listening to either low pitch or high pitch sounds. And then they would, uh, I would ask them to rate how bitter or how sweet was this, um, chocolate for you? And, uh, then they would, uh, do the same for the next ball. Uh, in this case, they would if they first listen to low pitch music, then. They would listen to high pitched music and the other way around. And I was asking them the same. How much did you like it? How bitter or sweet this chocolate was. And then they would start, uh, rating them differently. And I was curious, like, why would you do that? But I was seeing, uh, how music was changing the perception of taste. And, um, I saw it, you know, I saw it with my own eyes. It’s not just something I read. Uh, and then I would tell them, like, uh, this is the same chocolate. It’s just in two bowls. And they would look at me, and they were so baffled, they couldn’t understand, like they would say, like, this is, uh, I felt it differently. Uh, it’s not the same chocolate.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:44] So when they were. Listening to lower pitched sounds or music while eating the chocolate, they perceived it as more bitter. And when they were listening to high pitched music or high pitched sounds, they perceived the taste as sweeter. Even though both of those pieces came from the same chocolate bar.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:31:01] Yeah. Um, the low pitch music in this case enhanced 22%. The perception of bitterness and the high pitched music increased, well, a modest 5%. And this is okay. The chocolate was already, uh, 70% cacao, so it was more bitter. Okay, maybe it’s more difficult to draw people outside of bitterness when the chocolate is already bitter. Uh huh. High pitched music, which was more liked also, uh, had another effect. People were more willing to pay a higher amount for this chocolate, uh, roughly a third of the sample because it was more exciting music. They liked it more, and they unconsciously transferred this excitement towards the product. And they were willing to pay instead of like eight bucks, ten or more bucks for this chocolate.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:50] Wow, that is so fascinating. Well, and you point out in the book too, in the section how for consumers who are trying to make healthier nutritional choices, maybe less salt, less sweetener, you could add a pinch of sound to the mix. If you have this understanding and awareness of how sound influences our taste perception. So if you are trying to cut back on sugar, maybe listen to music that is higher pitch because because then you already are enhancing that perception of sweetness without having to actually add sugar to what you’re consuming. The other thing that you point out is helpful tips for medical professionals like doctors, because you point out that people who are going through chemotherapy often have really severely diminished appetites. Their taste, perception and sensitivity is really affected. And just in the last four weeks, I’ve talked to two different friends who are going through chemotherapy and specifically brought that up. So I was really interested to read that and how doctors can use this knowledge and awareness of auditory attributes of food items to kind of heighten taste perception for their patients, to give them, hopefully a more enjoyable eating experience.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:33:07] Yeah, I mean, this sonic seasoning, if you know how to pair different sounds with different tastes, you can enhance these tastes without any additional components and improve the whole food experience for these patients.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:22] Yeah. One other thing that you include in this section in this stage is for things for consumers to think about next time they go into a bar or restaurant to identify the background music and then ask, okay, what types of songs is this venue mostly playing? What genre is it? Is it fast? Tempo? Slow? What volume is the music? Second question to ask yourself does it fit with the ambiance or is there a disconnect? Third question can you notice if the tunes are influencing the behavior of your fellow patrons? And then fourth question take your time. I guess this isn’t a fourth question, but just a guideline to take your time and see if the venue is harnessing music’s power for their benefit. So super interesting things to consider next time any of us is in a venue like this.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:34:15] And this is maybe against a little bit, uh, the way music should be used very unconsciously. So if you’re so aware, maybe the influence is lower on you.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:25] Sure. Well, I think most of us, I mean, we are unaware of it unless we are really intentional about. Oh, I just heard this information or just read this book that Paul wrote, and now I’m really curious to pay more attention and be more intentional about noticing these things. And as consumers, for sure we can use it to our benefit in terms of reducing or being more aware of how much we’re drinking, if the music is loud and fast, and if listeners are making decisions for food store or a restaurant or a bar, you can. Use it to your advantage from a marketing perspective.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:35:02] Yeah, there are different tips, uh, when you’re when you know how to use you know, I always say music is a powerful tool when you know how to use it.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:10] Yes. Well, as I knew I would, we went over and we haven’t even gotten to the fourth stage. Is there anything really quick you want to just tell people to whet their appetite? Pun intended for that stage four section of your book, Food Waste and Cycle Renewal.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:35:27] Just, uh, a very interesting, uh, anecdote from a sewage center in Germany. They were using Mozart operas because, uh, people heard that there was something with, uh, you know, classical music that enhanced the production of milk in cows. So they said, why won’t we use this with bacteria to to degrade all these waste? And after a year of using music, the sludge was reduced to 1000m³. And this, uh, sewage center, which is roughly half of an Olympic swimming pool, and they saved €10,000 on costs on transporting the sludge. Wow. Uh, I mean, there’s so many things we can do. So what’s the excuse for not giving music a chance? Yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:13] Great point. And there are so many quotes from the book that I loved and had pulled out and would love to read all of these, but I’ll just pick a couple of them here. One is I believe that we can optimize the food cycle for greater sustainability, but also consumer enjoyment and marketability. These goals are not mutually exclusive. We can redefine and enhance the current state of the food industry and show that there’s another way to do business, care for our well-being, and revitalize our planet. Love that quote. And then one more that I’ll read. That kind of is just a great summary of the content of the book. By expanding our awareness of how sound and food interact, we can harness this connection and powerful ways to transform not only how we grow our food and what we eat, but also how we experience and engage with food. And that’s the end of that quote. But who doesn’t love music and food? So I just love this book that combines the two. I also love the illustrations, the front cover illustration. Shout out to your illustrator. I’ll let you say the name because I know I’ll completely mispronounce it. Tell us the name of your illustrator.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:37:26] Yeah, I mean, he he, uh. Fun fact he’s also my violin student.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:30] Oh, really?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:37:31] Yeah. Uh, his name is Aitor Acosta.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:35] Okay.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:37:35] It was wonderful. Uh, what? He did this there?
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:38] Yes. Well, I just love that front cover. I mean, it’s so descriptive of the contents of the book, but it’s also so artistic and colorful. It really grabs your attention. And it’s sort of fun and playful and whimsical at the same time. So love that. And then at the beginning of each stage in the book, there’s an illustration that is a play on piano keys. It’s very clever, and I’ll let readers see it for themselves without describing it anymore. But love the illustrations. So tell us real quick where can listeners find your book and also find your popular newsletter sound awareness?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:38:17] Yeah, so the book is on Amazon, so it’s just an e-book for now. Maybe it will be one day. Um, uh, hard copy, but for now it’s just an e-book.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:29] We’ll see if we can help propel it to hard copy status.
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:38:32] That’ll be great. And, uh, the newsletter is called Sound Awareness and it talks about all these topics. Uh, food is just one of them, but you can talk about how it enhances different parts of our psyche, how it relates to health, how it relates to nature. And there’s so much that music is related to that, uh, we don’t even know about. And here’s where you can find that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:57] Great. And I’ll include links to those in the show notes as well. Well, this has been fascinating as I knew it would be. Pablo, thanks so much for coming back on the show. I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story that you can share with us today?
Pavle Marinkovic: [00:39:18] Yes, in this case, it’s a song I wrote. Uh, I was playing around during my time at film scoring studies, and it’s a song called feast that inspired me to write this book. It was one of the songs because it was intended as a song to be played in a medieval banquet. I always, uh, look at it as something that would be in a movie, maybe someday, and it was linking food and music. It also made me think like, uh, well, music can go beyond just the food eating experience, and it could take into account the whole food cycle. So this is a feast.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:56] What a perfect song to use. As a coda for this conversation. Love it. Here’s a little clip of Paul’s composition feast.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai