Assignment 1: Commercial Soundscapes at China Hong Kong City & Harbour City (Cheung Chit)

On 18th September, a Sunday afternoon, I went to China Hong Kong City and Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui to explore their soundscapes. It is a usually busy high-class commercial area accessible by various forms of traffic. 

China Hong Kong City

China Hong Kong City is very quiet as Harbour City gets filled up by people. Most of the stores in China Hong Kong City were closed (due to it mainly serving tourists and people commuting to and from mainland China by ferry, which is not in service since the pandemic), and most of the few opened jewelry or eyeglasses stores do not have programmed music. The quietness in these types of stores help one-on-one conversation and tailoring between the seller and customers.

Not a lot of programmed music could be heard there. I focused exclusively on stores targeting children as they were opened. The store Kids Kids Car is a playground for toddlers to drive mini racecars and broadcasted upbeat nursery rhymes so loudly it could be heard the moment we approached the corridor to the store. Its foreground function to grab attention and branding is nicely executed, except the squeaking sounds of the racecars were much louder than the music, which was unpleasant to hear. 

   

Overall, it created an exciting atmosphere for the kids playing inside – as excited as they were, the music is ignored. Once you engage in play in the store, the music becomes background.

A capsule toy store full of capsule toy machine for the most popular cartoons and anime features also grabbed my attention. 

Machines of different brand played different lo-fi arrangements of Japanese cartoon music in the background through the speakers located at the side or bottom of the machine consoles. The dynamics were suitably weak, but one machine’s audio was so lo-fi it sounded unappealing to my ears:

Music played by the other machines were of higher quality, more repetitive and casual, with clear melodic lines and phrasing, to create an uplifting, casual mood as players approached the machine:

The audios combined sounded dissonant in the store. The sounds were faint and could only be heard clearly when you approached the machines. This was supposed to be organizing the space inside the stores into different machine areas, but the mall was too quiet and the store too small for such way of organization to work well when dissonance was the first thing I noticed walking into the store. 

On the other hand, I compared the music in the only fashion store that opened in China Hong Kong City – Levi’s – with the other fashion stores in Harbour City. All of them played pop songs through speakers hidden or exposed on the roof. Below audios are Levi’s (1^st audio) and Harbour City’s Bath and Body Works (2^nd and 3^rd), playing similar genres of pop songs with moderate tempo and typical instrumentation. Upon listening, they give a cool, fashionable yet welcoming impression.

Malls in HK do not usually incorporate music into their architecture; this is usually done by individual stores within the malls for branding or to retain customers, as this soundscape study confirmed. The hallways and elevators were filled with perfume scents instead. The dynamics of the stores’ music are uneven, and their placement of speakers differed among one another. At Harbour City, both Canada Goose and Diesel placed their speakers on the roof near the door, but the dynamics in Canada Goose’s music is much softer although both stores played similar music with very rhythmic pulsing drums. Below audios are Canada Goose recorded inside the store and Diesel recorded outside the store in sequence. It was also notable that Diesel used an accelerating stimulus progression.

 

Overall, the use of music was more effective in Harbour City than in China Hong Kong City, primarily as more customers would go to Harbour City during the pandemic. As music is not incorporated into the architecture of these malls, the genre, dynamic and tempo of music were entirely dependent on the stores’ management, resulting in varying shopping and listening experiences.