I am a server tech. It is a job that brings me to a lot of different businesses. It seems that if a place is playing music at all, they are playing 80’s rock. It doesn’t matter if its a factory, a fast food place, or a department store. Its either silence or 80’s rock. Why?
I haven’t experienced this. Sure, there have been some places that seem to play mostly 80s rock. But there have been places that have played all sorts of rock, and people in another online group I am in with much younger people report that some of the places they are in play some pop punk and emo.
Well, as someone who played in a mid-life crisis cover band for a number of years that focused on 80’s rock (with plenty of current and older stuff, but mostly 80’s), I can say that, for this period of time, it has a cross-generational appeal.
If we played Tainted Love, or Blister in the Sun, or White Wedding, etc. we consistently got the best responses across generations and demographics. Just one data point, and I suspect that this will change as generations age out and new ones age in.
Because it’s the best?
Because management are all in their 40s and 50s
I would vomit if I heard rap or hip hop. I like oldies, always have, and always will.
Music older than 20-30 years has had enough time to be distilled down to a set that represents the intersection of what is the most popular, what is expected to be inoffensive to the most people, and what still holds up today, after whatever fad of the era has long passed. And then they throw in Richard Marx, for some reason. 
Probably more importantly, most of their customers are probably somewhere between about 35 and 55, which is the sweet spot for 80s music. It’s the music of their childhoods/adolescense/young adulthood.
Back when I was a kid (late 1980s) working as a busboy, our restaurant and everywhere else played a LOT of late 1960s and pre-disco early 1970s stuff for the same reason- the people coming in were mostly in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and that’s what they liked.
25-30 years from now, you won’t be able to escape Katy Perry, Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift when you’re out eating or shopping.
I try to notice the background music in stores and I agree with Ludovic. All eras and years of music gets played. Sometimes they are mixed together in a single set - in a Perkins over the weekend I heard music from the 1960s to the 2000s - and sometimes different eras are played on different days - as at my local supermarket.
Otherwise, it’s probably confirmation bias. You notice every time you hear 80s music but let other songs pass through you without tagging the era.
Yeah, definitely not mostly 80s rock around the businesses I go to. Typically, they’re just tuned to a pop radio station. My local grocery plays Top 40. My usual gas station does play 80s, but it’s 70s and 80s dance/pop music, not rock. I’m sure there’s a few that play classic rock, which nowadays does include 80s and 90s rock, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Cover bands who play Tunes from the eighties are really popular right now.
I guess it’s actually from 1979, but I noticed recently that my supermarket was playing “Lost in the Supermarket” by the Clash.
It’s interesting to ponder – when we’re young, our choices of music can seem so important and so self-defining, but twenty years later, it all ends up smeared together into background noise.