Studio Orca designs the soundtrack that accompanies your Chipotle burrito

Studio Orca is the Brooklyn-based five-employee team behind the music programming for Chipotle’s 1,400 stores, and Chris Golub its founder. Business Insider and the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate website has published a short profile of the company.

While bits about “scouring music blogs” and attending multiple live shows a week to “scout bands” seem a bit hyperbolic (and not reflected in our listening to Chipotle’s playlist), it is interesting to hear about Studio Orca’s and Chipotle’s philosophy behind in-store music selection.

“Unlike Internet radio stations that frequently determine song selection by genre, Studio Orca selects each song individually based its own criteria and the client,” Business Insider wrote. “Tracks must fit the desired vibe of the client’s space, and the studio listens for matching basslines, lyric content and recording quality of each song to ensure they pair well with each other.”

Other companies in this space include Boulder, CO-based Custom Channels (the Chipotle stream is apparently hosted by Custom Channels, but we didn’t find anything in the article or on Studio Orca’s site regading the business relationships of these companies), FullChannel Galaxie from Rhode Island, and even SiriusXM and Pandora. Check out the piece here.