Experience maker Michiel Borstlap: “Achtergrondmuziek moet verrijken en niet vervelen.”

You often only notice background music when it’s gone. But when you walk into an HNK location, you quickly realise: here, the music is far more than filler – it’s an indispensable part of the overall experience. HNK works with Michiel Borstlap, whose company specialises in creating high-quality musical atmospheres. “As with everything in life, when you give background music proper attention, it becomes more beautiful and better. In fact, I don’t really see it as background music at all – it’s just music. You don’t have background wine, do you? Music is far too beautiful to be treated as something in the background – and at Gallery Play Media, we certainly don’t view it that way,” says Borstlap, who is also a well-known pianist and composer.

He launched the company five years ago, when Covid made performing live impossible worldwide. “What I enjoy most is making people happy with music. When I couldn’t perform on stage anymore, I suddenly started having new ideas. For example: how incredible would it be not to play in just one place, but in hundreds at once? For that, you need amazing technology and a database of millions of tracks.” And so Gallery Play Media was born. Today, Borstlap not only provides the music for all HNK locations, but also for De Bijenkorf, Waldorf Astoria, Château Neercanne, and several Amsterdam metro stations operated by GVB.

Local forest sounds

Borstlap sees creating music for a space as “designing your ideas about a building through sound.” “Just like an interior designer wanders through a space and says: there should be a swing here and a plant over there because that fits the building’s branding, we do the same – but with our ears,” he explains. That’s exactly how he approached the HNK locations. He remembers HNK Amsterdam Sloterdijk particularly vividly. “It was brilliant. We visited the building and spoke with the staff. That location has five public zones: two lobbies, a restaurant, a bar, and the toilets. For each of these spaces, we created a different musical atmosphere. We look not only at the mood, but also at the ceilings: what are the acoustics like? What works well here?”

Creating music for the two lobbies was especially memorable. “When you enter through one of the entrances, you almost step into a jungle – there are plants everywhere. I immediately pictured a forest and decided to incorporate nature sounds; not constantly, but every now and then. Early one morning, we recorded sounds in a local forest and mixed them into the music. That’s what you hear now.” The other lobby stood out because of its industrial look. “There, we went for something with an EDM feel. You walk in and instantly think: something’s happening here.”

A soundtrack for a space

In every room, Borstlap believes visitors should feel as though they’re stepping into part of a film – he often compares the music to a soundtrack. “Your eyes are essentially the camera, and you’re witnessing a film unfold in every space.” For him, background music goes far beyond creating a “song” or even a playlist – the latter he calls “a thing of the past.” Gallery Play Media offers a specially designed encyclopaedia of around a million tracks, which is also interactive: through the app, HNK employees can give feedback on the music or request something different. “We all have Spotify and know what a playlist is – usually maybe 2,000 songs. But we don’t do playlists; we do categorisation. Whatever you like – Moroccan music, funk, jazz, classical, pop – we have everything ever released in that genre. Take soul, for example: we have categories for male soul, female soul, pre-2000 soul, post-2000 soul, French soul, American soul.. You can go on endlessly. The selections we send to a company like HNK may contain 10,000 tracks. To hear them all, you’d have to live at HNK for two years straight. With us, you rarely hear the same piece twice.”

A musical journey

But the music Borstlap creates for HNK doesn’t just differ from room to room – it also adapts to the time of day. Over the course of the day, visitors experience a full musical journey. “In the morning, you might want some balanced French jazz – it works nicely,” he explains. “But by 11 a.m., that’s usually enough — you’re ready for something different. And from 4 p.m. onwards, we slowly work towards disco.” Gallery Play Media not only tailors the music to the time of day, but also the day of the week. “A disco track like ‘Light My Fire’ is perfect for Friday drinks, but if you hear it on a Monday morning and suddenly feel like a beer, that might not be ideal.” Borstlap is fascinated by the connection between the human brain and music: what feelings does music evoke in us? This knowledge underpins his sound design. “I’m a disco fanatic myself, but if you’re not on the dance floor, disco can become pretty annoying after 15 minutes. Sometimes you can be listening to the most beautiful music in the world, but if it’s the wrong moment, it just doesn’t land.”

Disco on a Monday

And that’s exactly why the technology is so important, he emphasises. Because sometimes, you do feel like a disco anthem on a Monday morning – and that should be possible. “Through the Gallery Play Media app, HNK employees can share their opinions. A green smiley means you like a track; a red thumbs-down means it’s immediately skipped. And if you want a completely different mood for a moment, you can request a vibe change.”

This direct feedback has taught Gallery Play Media an enormous amount, Borstlap says. “What doesn’t work? What does? That’s how we get closer and closer to perfection. Which is wonderful for music.”

It’s partly this shared pursuit of perfection that makes the collaboration with HNK such a success, he adds. “HNK is groundbreaking. Very few office concepts pay attention to the ears – to music. Yes, hotels and retail do, but in other places it’s often forgotten. When you walk into an HNK building, you feel straight away: I’d have liked to be here yesterday as well – this place is alive. It’s fantastic to design music for a place like that. And because we’re a young company, we’ve learned a tremendous amount. Also, they have excellent cappuccino – rather important in a workplace,” he laughs.