Muzak ranges from the soothing sounds of
spa music designed to make you relax and fall asleep so they can wake you up an
hour later to the very flat sounds of elevator music which sounds like someone
lost a old Nokia phone in there and is constantly calling it to find it. The
kind of music played also has psychological effects on the listeners. Some
department stores play a slower, more relaxed kind of music to make people
browse longer while more hip clothing stores prefer to play feel good uptempo
music to influence people to make impulse purchases.
So what is Muzak and why wouldn’t companies
just play music off an ipod/phone or radio station? Muzak strangely gets its
name from a music company that used to make that kind of music. It’s somewhat
like how we call a photocopy a xerox. Way back in 1934, this company made
instrumental music primarily for use as background music in hotels, department
stores and offices. They built a huge collection of recorded music by hiring
professional bands and orchestras to record the music. The industrial
revolution of the 1940s required a lot of industrial production and companies
found that playing muzak made workers happier and more productive. With the
building of skyscrapers and lifts began a whole new market for muzak. In the
beginning, people were not too comfortable with the idea of getting into small
boxes which went up dark shafts. Building owners found that playing soothing
music would help calm people’s nerves and elevators were fitted to play muzak.
This proved so popular that muzak began to be known as elevator music. Soon
muzak was everywhere and millions were listening to this simple instrumental
music.
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Why play Muzak instead of popular radio/pop
tunes? Playing popular radio or pop tunes requires one to take licences and pay
royalties to the artists, adding to the cost. Since Muzak owns all the rights
to their music, there are no additional charges, making it much more
economical. They also have people to tailor the music to your needs. No need to
worry about offensive or objectionable lyrics either.
Nowadays, a lot of companies make and sell
muzak but under their own names. This includes lobby music, spa music, ambient
music, soundscapes, etc. Muzak is everywhere and yet there is no category at
the annual Grammy Awards for muzak. Which is a good thing. How would one choose
one bland tune over another and why would you want to give it an award anyway.
The Grammy foundation did however tie up with Gucci timepieces to preserve over
20,000 rare original recordings of Muzak. With the number of businesses,
elevators and hotels increasing every day, the future for this form of music
looks bright indeed.
