4 ms·

Captain Pedantic checking in to remind our viewers that at a quick glance this does not appear to be Muzak (EDIT: no, that is definitely not Muzak), but rather

Captain Pedantic checking in to remind our viewers that at a quick glance this does not appear to be Muzak (EDIT: no, that is definitely not Muzak), but rather ambient music played in K-Mart stores. Muzak is a specific brand of ambient music, which appears to suffer the same fate as Kleenex and Xerox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak That page is worth a read, if only for the means of distribution used over the years. But do I ever digress...

shervinafshar 6y ago
Thank you Captain Pedantic. HN threads won't be the same without nitpicking and pedantry. I think by "ambient" you mean piped music, elevator music, Muzak(tm). Because Eno ain't no elevator music.
- polka_haunts_us 6y ago
  It's funny. My favorite band, Devo, released Muzak mixes of their songs several times in the 80s. However, you would never hear such a thing piped in a store in 2020. Plain vanilla "Whip It" though? Absolutely. Said another way, Eno (and Devo and many others) are essentially the Muzak of the modern day.
  - shervinafshar 6y ago
    Devo was a bunch of brilliant, genre-defying creatives. In my point of view they have been as influential as Kraftwerk, but don't get as much love and respect.
- jjulius 6y ago
  >Because Eno ain't no elevator music. In keeping with the pedantic nitpicking, I think Eno might actually disagree and say that his music could be elevator music. In the liner notes[0] for 'Ambient 1: Music for Airports', he writes that "Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." But, speaking for myself, I wouldn't relegate Eno's music to the elevator. :) [0]https://audioweb.sitehost.iu.edu/T369/eno-ambient.pdf https://audioweb.sitehost.iu.edu/T369/eno-ambient.pdf
  - shervinafshar 6y ago
    Touché. Eno could be elevator music then.
    - marcrosoft 6y ago
      HN comment threads are becoming like Reddit.
      - dang 6y ago
        Please follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note the very last one. HN has been "becoming like Reddit" since before it was HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852
    - chris_wot 6y ago
      Pedant's point: Eno's music could be played in an elevator. Eno is not elevator music.
      - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
        What elevators are you guys getting on that have music?
        jacobolus 6y ago
        https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-elevator-music https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-elevator-mu...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - wumms 6y ago
        Rene Magritte duck typing
  - 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ggm 6y ago
  Eric Satie invented the form, composing music to leave the theatre to. He's said to have got very angry when people refused to leave.
rektide 6y ago
At some point I feel like society deserves a vote. Sorry, you have claimed copyright & intellectual property, but we are just going to go to duckduckgo.com and google for whatever we're looking for. Your insistence that this (google, noun) is your word has failed; we all know it, why deny it. Whatever the owners of "Muzak" wanted, whatever they thought of it: the dog is out of the yard. It's free. Your claim may be legal, but it is, by all accounts, incorrect and false. This word has a meaning now, this passive easy listening background vibe, humming nothings, it embodies something more real than what the owner intended. It's falsity & a lie that we let law & property dictate to us the terms by which we think. It's said that a rose would smell just as sweet by any other name. Well, society knows these roses, far better than whomever came up with the name. Let us not let the first-comers shape & dictate to us our usages. (Velcro, I am coming for you. Your hegemony over this idea is coming to an end! We will not fall back to "hook and loop" forever, like animals! We all know we need a word. That you own it? Bah! Poppycock! The resistance of your lawyers does not cow me, does not frighten us!)
- vonseel 6y ago
  Which, I suppose, is why they have rebranded to “Mood Media”, and no longer use the word Muzak. As you might have seen if you read the article.
  - rektide 6y ago
    This post is currently underwater & doesn't deserve to be. I don't fully entirely agree with the shortness. But: upvoting. :) Having read a little further now, I would say though, whatever the company brands itself as today does not strongly imply that they are permitting "muzak" to be a free term. Smart move to decouple yourself some, especially from a term that is synonymous with bland indistinct elevator music or on hold music, and it's probably hopefully all good these days, but there's still plenty of room for this company to perhaps be trying to push trademarks or harass other folk who use the word "muzak".
anon73044 6y ago
I believe most of the large retailers play from the Hitlist or Hot FM playlists. http://muzakwpn.muzak.com/ http://muzakwpn.muzak.com/
tclancy 6y ago
I worked at a restaurant that did have it and they appeared to be magnificent 16 track tapes (or whatever the alpha male of the 8-track family was). They looked like they could fit a full LP.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  The YouTuber "techmoan" has done a few videos on the hardware that ran various background music systems, and one that stands out is the 3M Cantata, which had some massive tape cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ There are also systems with smaller cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_5DPvPiUMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_5DPvPiUMY Stacks of vinyl records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M And standard cassette tapes running at a lower speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY

shervinafshar 6y ago

Thank you Captain Pedantic. HN threads won't be the same without nitpicking and pedantry. I think by "ambient" you mean piped music, elevator music, Muzak(tm). Because Eno ain't no elevator music.

polka_haunts_us 6y ago
It's funny. My favorite band, Devo, released Muzak mixes of their songs several times in the 80s. However, you would never hear such a thing piped in a store in 2020. Plain vanilla "Whip It" though? Absolutely. Said another way, Eno (and Devo and many others) are essentially the Muzak of the modern day.
- shervinafshar 6y ago
  Devo was a bunch of brilliant, genre-defying creatives. In my point of view they have been as influential as Kraftwerk, but don't get as much love and respect.
jjulius 6y ago
>Because Eno ain't no elevator music. In keeping with the pedantic nitpicking, I think Eno might actually disagree and say that his music could be elevator music. In the liner notes[0] for 'Ambient 1: Music for Airports', he writes that "Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." But, speaking for myself, I wouldn't relegate Eno's music to the elevator. :) [0]https://audioweb.sitehost.iu.edu/T369/eno-ambient.pdf https://audioweb.sitehost.iu.edu/T369/eno-ambient.pdf
- shervinafshar 6y ago
  Touché. Eno could be elevator music then.
  - marcrosoft 6y ago
    HN comment threads are becoming like Reddit.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note the very last one. HN has been "becoming like Reddit" since before it was HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    Pedant's point: Eno's music could be played in an elevator. Eno is not elevator music.
    - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
      What elevators are you guys getting on that have music?
      - jacobolus 6y ago
        https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-elevator-music https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-elevator-mu...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - wumms 6y ago
      Rene Magritte duck typing
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ggm 6y ago
Eric Satie invented the form, composing music to leave the theatre to. He's said to have got very angry when people refused to leave.

rektide 6y ago

At some point I feel like society deserves a vote. Sorry, you have claimed copyright & intellectual property, but we are just going to go to duckduckgo.com and google for whatever we're looking for. Your insistence that this (google, noun) is your word has failed; we all know it, why deny it. Whatever the owners of "Muzak" wanted, whatever they thought of it: the dog is out of the yard. It's free. Your claim may be legal, but it is, by all accounts, incorrect and false. This word has a meaning now, this passive easy listening background vibe, humming nothings, it embodies something more real than what the owner intended. It's falsity & a lie that we let law & property dictate to us the terms by which we think. It's said that a rose would smell just as sweet by any other name. Well, society knows these roses, far better than whomever came up with the name. Let us not let the first-comers shape & dictate to us our usages. (Velcro, I am coming for you. Your hegemony over this idea is coming to an end! We will not fall back to "hook and loop" forever, like animals! We all know we need a word. That you own it? Bah! Poppycock! The resistance of your lawyers does not cow me, does not frighten us!)

vonseel 6y ago
Which, I suppose, is why they have rebranded to “Mood Media”, and no longer use the word Muzak. As you might have seen if you read the article.
- rektide 6y ago
  This post is currently underwater & doesn't deserve to be. I don't fully entirely agree with the shortness. But: upvoting. :) Having read a little further now, I would say though, whatever the company brands itself as today does not strongly imply that they are permitting "muzak" to be a free term. Smart move to decouple yourself some, especially from a term that is synonymous with bland indistinct elevator music or on hold music, and it's probably hopefully all good these days, but there's still plenty of room for this company to perhaps be trying to push trademarks or harass other folk who use the word "muzak".

anon73044 6y ago

I believe most of the large retailers play from the Hitlist or Hot FM playlists. http://muzakwpn.muzak.com/ http://muzakwpn.muzak.com/

tclancy 6y ago

I worked at a restaurant that did have it and they appeared to be magnificent 16 track tapes (or whatever the alpha male of the 8-track family was). They looked like they could fit a full LP.

kalleboo 6y ago
The YouTuber "techmoan" has done a few videos on the hardware that ran various background music systems, and one that stands out is the 3M Cantata, which had some massive tape cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ There are also systems with smaller cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_5DPvPiUMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_5DPvPiUMY Stacks of vinyl records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M And standard cassette tapes running at a lower speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY