background music | Church effects?

I've been involved, am involved, in curating worship which involves multi-media elements and often self-directed interactions with materials, prompts and stations. One of the things that regularly accompanies worship like this is background music. We generally try to pick stuff we think is calm, supportive of the activities and with the right sort of ethos. So, it's interesting to read that background music has become something of an industry and that there has been quite a bit of consumer research given over to it.

Music, even when you are barely aware of it, can be surprisingly powerful. Over recent decades, researchers have found that it can affect how much time we think has passed while waiting in a queue, how co-operative shoppers are with sales staff, and even how sweet or bitter food tastes. One study found that shoppers’ preference for French or German wine shifted according to which of the respective countries’ traditional music was playing from a nearby set of
speakers.

I want to be able to find some of this research at some point because I'd be interested to know if it contains clues that would help us to choose background music for worship occasions or even to be generally present in church spaces that experience visitors. Quite a lot of church buildings like cathedrals seem now to have background music being played. Sometimes it is live because the organist and/or choir are practising. Sometimes it is 'piped' music and usually that is sacred music -choral, instrumental etc. I don't think I've heard music in a church building in those kinds of circumstances which is, for example, ambient electronica, for example. I find myself wondering how that might be 'received'.

In effect playing 'sacred music' (dislike the term: other music can be God-disclosing, and 'sacred' music can be theofugic in effect sometimes) is a branding decision, in terms of the article -whether deliberate or unconscious. But what if we did the sonic branding in ways that deliberately and carefully didn't play to stereotypes? Perhaps there are cathedrals or other open-to-the-public church spaces that don't just play 'sacred music'? (I'm aware that there are some that also play contemporary Christian music -which is usually MOR folk-rock, by and large).

But there's some interesting stuff by Moby and others that could be thought about. Some 'new age' and meditation music ... ?

Inside the booming business of background music | News | The Guardian: