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The Nation's Pulse
The Day the Muzak Died
Last week it was reported that debt-ridden Muzak Holdings LLC had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This was no doubt a blow to the company's 1,250 employees in Fort Mill, S.C., especially at a time when jobs are scarce. In recent years Muzak has repositioned itself as a leader in "audio architecture," but at a time when businesses are having trouble holding on to their "brick and mortar" architecture, it is easy to see why Muzak is in trouble.
Muzak was the brainchild of Major General George Owen Squier, a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. Gen. Squier may have been the most celebrated inventor of his day, had it not been for his contemporaries Thomas Edison and Wilber and Orville Wright. In fact, as one of the founders of the U.S. Air Force, Gen. Squier negotiated with the Wrights to buy the first U.S. Army airplanes. More important, Squier invented the multiplexing process (whereby multiple analog message signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium), was then elected to the National Academy of Science, and had a class of troopships named after him. Still, for all that, he will go down in history as the creator of Muzak.
It was in 1922 that Squier capitalized on his wartime telecommunications experience by founding Wired Radio, a service that piped dance music and newscasts into businesses over electric lines. The general was by no means the first to see the beneficial effects of background music on production -- as early as 1915, Edison was asked to install several of his new phonograph machines in a cigar factory, and General Electric had been hiring piano players to play in its shops for decades. Squire, who was partial to the sound of the brand name Kodak, later changed the name of the company to Muzak. After Squier's death in 1934, Muzak playlists evolved from dance tunes and newscasts to deliberately bland compositions performed by a company orchestra. It was these compositions that were introduced into elevators to calm the nerves of jittery passengers and earned Muzak the derogatory nickname "elevator music."
Throughout the mid-20th century Muzak oozed into America's airports, grocery stores, dentist offices and bank lobbies, reaching at its peak100 million listeners a day. But by the late 1960s, rival companies appeared on the scene, most delivering original rock tunes instead of square old Mantovani covers. By the 1980s, background music was no longer simply a strategy to boost productivity; it was ingrained in the culture. People grew anxious and edgy in its absence, not unlike junkies in need of a fix.
The inevitable Muzak backlash came in the 1980s, when rocker Ted Nugent tried -- and failed -- to buy the company for $10 million so he could "destroy it." More and more, banks, doctor's offices, and restaurants realized they could save a bundle by purchasing a speaker system and tuning into a local easy rock radio station or simply popping in a cassette tape. Today nearly every restaurant, lobby, department store, and supermarket has its own endless audio loop that seems stuck on Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time" or some such diabolical earworm. As I've doubtless mentioned, I have a low threshold for psychic pain, which is why shopping causes me more than the usual amount of agony. In my younger days I actually worked in one of these evil aural environments and I don't think I've ever recovered.
RECENTLY BRITAIN'S Independent newspaper called Muzak "one of the most reviled phenomena of the 20th century." That seems a bit extreme. After all, the pop music -- or, more likely, television shows -- played in waiting rooms and restaurants today makes me long for the heyday of relatively harmless Muzak. Or -- even better -- silence. I am old enough to remember a time when one could walk the aisles of Piggly Wiggly without being subjected to the outrageous ululations of some R&B diva. For most people, however, the sound of silence would have some sort of catastrophic effect one dare not imagine. Indeed, the only thing evidently worse than silence is classical music. This brings me to a story Theodore Dalrymple likes to recount in which the Belgian writer Simon Leys describes the alarming effects of classical music on your average person:
Leys was sitting in a café where other customers were chatting, playing cards, or having a drink. The radio was on, tuned to a station that relayed idle chatter and banal popular music (you are lucky these days if popular music is banal only). But suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it played the first movement of Mozart's clarinet quintet, transforming the café into what Leys called "the antechamber of paradise." The customers stopped what they were doing, as if startled. Then one of them stood up, went over to the radio, and tuned it to another station, restoring the idle chatter and banal music. There was general relief, as if everyone felt that the beauty and refinement of Mozart were a reproach to their lives to which they could respond only by suppressing Mozart.
So who needs Mozart? In the hands of a great composer, even canned background music can approach the sublime. This was certainly the case in the ambient sound recordings of Brian Eno, particularly his "elevator noir" masterwork Music for Airports, recorded in 1978. The idea for Music for Airports came to Eno, not surprisingly, while his flight was delayed at Cologne Bonn Airport and he was forced to endure hours of uninventive, grating background music. Today Eno's music graces those same terminals. And while insipid background music inspired Brian Eno, Eno's ambient works inspired Muzak's recent venture into audio architecture.
Society's default cultural setting is set incredibly low, and seems to inch lower every year. Far from reversing the trend, I fear Muzak's passing will only drag us deeper into the cultural abyss.
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frost| 2.19.09 @ 7:15AM
Fun story, thanks. As a retired broadcaster, love these occasional informative columns on topics too often overlooked. That said, two puzzling questions: How come that many employees, for an apparently simple system? And, do you think we can now escape that Pubulum Puke version of Tom Jobim's "Girl From Ipanema" next time in an elevator?
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The Day the Muzak Died - Spectator.org | Psychic Hub links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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David m| 2.19.09 @ 8:45AM
Do your research. Muzak is not passing. The operational side of the business is strong and there are no plans to shutter the service. And speaking of the service, if you would take more time to do your job, you would find that the vast majority of Muzak's client base are using original artist music and not sappy covers of yesteryear. The only lame coverwork I see is your shoddy attempt at journalism.
Pingback| 2.19.09 @ 8:53AM
Topics about Music » The Day the Muzak Died links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Ken Graham| 2.19.09 @ 8:55AM
I would rather hear Billy Joel's music playing in a department store any day than the canned, frozen, processed confection that passes for 'music' now.
WhiteRB| 2.19.09 @ 8:55AM
Last week I took my octogenarian old lady to the doctor. Of course, we had to wait forever, and of course a tv was blaring, and a show called Ellen hit the tepid, bleached, non state of the art tv screen. I got sick being in the presence of such idiocy. The beatific expressions on the faces of the women , and sadly some men told the story of this ultra blue state I call home (stuck around for family reasons). What is most nauseating about this " star " ? Well, worst of all she thinks she is quite a dancer. Give Muzak any day. At least my blood pressure would have remained normal, and my lunch properly digested.
frost| 2.19.09 @ 9:47AM
Oh -- interestingly (maybe?) those "Smooth Jazz" excuses for radio stations? They're really elevator music stations, with groups like "Fourplay" and Kenny Gorlic's ubiqutous soprano saxophone - - - and condescending type "jocks" who seemed to come out of the cookie-cutter machine. Sad.
Inside Info| 2.19.09 @ 2:15PM
Actually, I work for a Muzak franchise. The company's bankruptcy filing has nothing to do with the current downturn in the ecomony. It has to do with poor management. The company had a chief executive a few years ago who made one horrible decision after another and caused financial trouble for the corporation. The problem with Muzak LLC is long term debt from the time of the former executive. It is not because nobody wants the music anymore.
Monkeydarts| 2.19.09 @ 2:39PM
The stereotype of Muzak's service promoted here is way out of date. The company long ago moved away from the Hollyride Strings version of today's pop hits. The Muzak of today has to go into Chap. 11 due to heavy debt obligations in a marketplace that is credit shy-- their customer base is still there. A trip by their HQ building in Fort Mill is quite an eye-opening experience for those stuck in a 60's view of what the company is.
Paul Milenkovic| 2.19.09 @ 4:16PM
There is a grocery store in Madison, Wisconsin, and no, it is not the Whole Foods, which plays classical music. And not just classical music but sensitive performances. Such as flute concertos played on period instruments by people who know how to play them in tune and get good sound out of them.
I had asked a checkout clerk about this, to offer a compliment on the choice of background music, and I got a disdainful response. I told my teacher of baroque transverse flute about this, and he chuckled about "classical Muzak" as chamber music was originally written and performed as background music for wealthy people going about whatever tasks the do.
I have noticed lately that they cut out the speakers where you check out, and you can only here the "classical Muzak" out in the aisles past the meat and produce sections.
David Govett| 2.19.09 @ 4:23PM
For each generation, the music one grows up with is music. The music of older people is slow noise. The music of younger people is loud noise. Sic transit musica mundi.
Interloper| 2.19.09 @ 4:44PM
I agree with the commenters who have pointed out that Christopher Orlet's take on ambient music is suspect. Most music heard in locales these days is geared to the specific location. In the housewares section of Macy's one hears smooth jazz, in Junior's Hip Hop, in Misses or Mens, Top 40, etc. On customer service phone waiting the music often matches the company, with Apple having more hip music than Microsoft, and Microsoft cooler music than Sears and so on.
The racist aspect of Orlet's piece is also telling. He seems stuck in the 1950s, when West African derived music was supposed to cause white people to go wild. Enough with dated racist stereotypes, please.
Surely, even with its political backwardness, AS could find better contributors.
frost| 2.19.09 @ 4:45PM
I won't say "where," but there's a McDonald's with music piped into the drive-thru lane -- Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughn, even Jack Sheldon! George Shearing was the most "commercial" sound heard. Normally, when eating on-the-run, I'll do Quiznos, Arbees or JackInTheBox, except when I'm in this one neighborhood... then I'll forgo the gourmet fast-food for the music in the drive-thru line --- and 'cause they're slow, it's even funner...
Matt| 2.19.09 @ 5:57PM
As a child of the 70s, elevator music was a running joke. Yet what replaced it was worse. You could at least tune out Muzak, unlike the "outrageous ululations of some R&B;diva." Silence is best. But given society's inability to unplug from the noise, Muzak now seems a strong second!
Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 7:47PM
the worst muzak is better than the best rap 'music'. This piece is top notch, for those of us who like music more than anything.
or used to.
Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 7:51PM
ignore Interloper, he is just here to bait (and of course switch) you; if he knew more about music he could go to a great music site instead of wasting HIS time here.
you chump, Interloper!
Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 7:54PM
...you think you're wasting our time, Interloper, but you are only wasting your own!
that is justice.
whiterb| 2.19.09 @ 9:33PM
Interloper, when America formally splits into 2 nations, the one that has an evolved 50's culture is where anyone with a mind and a soul will reside. You are free to live in your mobocracy, idiocracy left wing utopia. I'll live among the Ozzie and Harriet middle class, and I care less what color my neighbors skin smight happen to be.
Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 11:01PM
in the meantime Intergropen will wear us down at AS, even if it is his time he's wasting, because he's wasting our energy.
and btw i DO care what race my neighbors are-- i want them to be ASIAN.
Wes Stillwagon| 2.20.09 @ 7:32AM
YOu did NOT hear Mantovani on MUZAK. Your actually low level of music knowledge enabled you to think you did, but you did not. MUZAK featured public domain recordings by non-descript hired musicians and not recordings requiring royalty payments. Mantovani has had over forty CD releases within the last five years. Does this sound like a has-been? Non only in the mind of the low-to middlin music critic. Monty's music will be around for many decades after the writer of this drivel is dust.
Jeremiah| 2.20.09 @ 10:30AM
Inertleper, what do you teach this time? Sociology of Music? You remind me of Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip. Were you in Bummin'hum along MLK? Or with Rosa in that bus? You're a pathetic liar and a crook.
Kevin Riley O'Keeffe| 2.20.09 @ 12:48PM
"By the 1980s, background music was no longer simply a strategy to boost productivity; it was ingrained in the culture. People grew anxious and edgy in its absence, not unlike junkies in need of a fix."
Bullshit.
Rick Josey| 2.21.09 @ 10:45AM
Muzak has it's place. By its very nature soothing music soothes.
But what we need right now in America is another musical jolt. The kind I blogged about this morning. Something that once shifted our national mood literally overnight, and lifted us out of our depression over Kennedy's assassination...
Yes, the Beatles suddenly appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. And the world changed.
That's the power of music. And today we need some patriotic hit songs.
Give me liberty. And some marching music.
www.PatriotHangout.com
Bill Warren| 2.22.09 @ 9:24PM
Nice commentary on Muzak but please don't place any ignorant readers in a position where they violate federal copyright law and play music in a public space without payment of royalty fees, based upon one of your comments in the post about using the easy listening station or poppin in a cassette to play over the speakers.
Certain exclusions apply for very small businesses but for the majority of American business, a business music subscription service or a direct royalty payment contract is required. In addition to any fine, a business deals with the lasting public stigma of a criminal charge for copyright violation.
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