Music on restaurants

Some restaurants in France have music, some don't. Looks as if you went to some that didn't.

You have observed correctly. Noise pollution in restaurants is only a thing in the very cheapest of takeaway restaurants. Which is good.

Good to hear, I hate music in restaurants. Not everyone wants to listen to it, certainly not everyone has the same taste in music so in my opinion it's best left out. I prefer to hear my dining companions along with the hum of a busy restaurant, there's too much noise pollution as it is without adding to it needlessly.

Funny, I have always considered this to be a positive thing, as I hate having to compete with music to have a conversation with my dinner companion(s). Some US restaurants are deafening.

Agree with too loud of music that makes it difficult to hear. But I still would have loved to hear some instrumental French music in the background sometimes.

Count me in the group that dislikes background music. I hope you're right and it's not a thing in France. But then I rarely listen to music anywhere; not in my car, not on my phone...

"But I still would have loved to hear some instrumental French music"

If you mean more or less traditional French folk music, there is no chance that you will hear this kind of music in a restaurant. The closest thing could be the "Guinguettes" (some restaurants along the Marne River)

https://youtu.be/Wr78vDoR-2U?t=241

But in this case, it's part of the show

Yes, music is only a thing in some larger or 'trendier' establishments, but some places do have some. Personally I do not like music in restaurants as my hearing isn't that great to start with... makes me work too hard to listen to the conversation.

one of the great pleasures of dining in Paris is that you can hear your companions and converse; they don't blast music as they do in almost all US restaurants. At home this has driven our friends to dinner parties at home to avoid the noise. In France I don't recall ever encountered the scourge of 'background music'

You are correct in thinking "...it's just not done...". One of the best things about many restaurants in Europe, in my opinion, is the low noise level. This is due not only to the absence of background music, but also to the fact that most people raised in Europe are simply not a loud as many people from the other parts of the world. We actually apologized to the owner of a small place in the alps for the loudness of a group of people from the U.S. that were part of a larger tour group. She said they were used to it, and had come to expect it from many people that were not from Europe.

We've heard background music in many restaurants in France, though it's always at such a low level that after a few tables are seated you can't even hear it. And it's always American music, not French music. You expect Django Reinhardt or Charles Trenet and you get Louis Armstrong.

That's not a problem for me. When I'm in France and hear What a Wonderful World, I get all choked up.

French people enjoying their restaurant meal can be just as loud as Americans. In fact my husband and I (two Americans) are usually the quietest people in a restaurant, not because we are naturally quiet but because we've been married so long.

We have recently had two very nice restaurant meals disturbed by very loud fellow diners. There are some people who just bray -- and they tend to be the ones who dominate the conversation. One was at Chez Dumonet and an American man at the next table was bloviating in a near shout the whole evening. Another was a group of German businessmen who got drunker and drunker as the evening progressed at L'Initial and made it hard to converse at our table across the room.