Word: muzak
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...Muzak, now 50, soothes (or irritates) 80 million people...
...Raleigh's first colony in the New World, the 300th anniversary of the completion of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the 200th anniversary of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, the 100th anniversary of the first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary and the 50th anniversary of Muzak. Muzak? Wouldn't that be like celebrating the first broadcast singing commercial...
...sound of Muzak is, of course, almost everywhere, and metastasizing: in the bank and the supermarket and the of fice elevator, on the telephone line when the victim has been put on hold. It plays in the White House and the Pentagon; it played during the Olympics; it played in the Apollo XI spaceship that carried Neil Armstrong to the moon...
...Muzak Corp., which is now part of Westinghouse, estimates that its recordings are heard by 80 million people every day; they are syndicated in 19 countries; the company and its affiliates take in more than $150 million annually. "Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning," says James Keenan, an industrial psychologist and chairman of the firm's board of scientific advisers, "because it massifies symbolism in which not few but all can participate." But not quite all, Dr. Keenan...
...Muzak and other forms of background music have been a part of the American office scene for a half-century, partly in the belief that music soothes people into working more efficiently. But all of it sounds pretty much alike, and some of it, in fact, can lull people to sleep. Now two Washington State entrepreneurs, Michael Malone and Mark Torrance, have selected different kinds of music for different kinds of situations. They call it foreground music. Malone's firm, Audio Environments of Seattle, this year expects sales of $15 million...