The Day The Music Died – Again

Friday, February 13th, 2009
By Russ Crupnick, Vice President, Senior Industry Analyst

Though they hope to one day exit Chapter 11 protection, we can add Muzak to the growing cemetery of iconic music industry names — like Tower Records, Sam Goody, and Chrysalis Records (for you Tull and Blondie fans) — that have faltered of late. In case you’ve never left your cubicle, Muzak is widely credited with inventing constantly humming, non-offending “elevator music” one often hears in stores, office and store hoists, and dentists’ offices.

Like many I had a bone to pick with Muzak, as I considered it an outrage that “All You Need Is Love” or “Dazed and Confused” could be performed by the Serbian National Orchestra and fed to the public, in order to encourage them to buy more wheat bread.

Is nothing sacred?

So what if Muzak goes silent? As I shopped at the grocery store last week, it occurred to me the music industry can use every touch point possible to remind us of a song, get us to hum a tune, and maybe even think about buying a CD or song download. Muzak isn’t as cool as MySpace Music or iTunes, but when an industry is losing millions of shoppers, cool doesn’t matter. It just comes down to what’s putting tunes in consumers’ heads, so they might consider buying the song or album.

If there’s no more elevator music, I wonder: Will more people ask me about the weather, or my breakfast, rather than just staring at the numbers rolling past? Someday maybe we’ll wish for the days when we could just hum along to Henry Mancini’s version of “Thriller.”

1 Comment

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  By Rob, February 13, 2009 @ 3:43 pm

  Actually, Muzak offers a wide range of musical shopping themes and they are in many edgy specialty retailers. Their issues are not with the well-researched fact that te right music gets lift, but with retailers cutting back on costs.

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