Talk:Muzak/Archive 1

Sirius and AMTC
Sirius is not in and of itself a competitor to Muzak. Unlike XM, which does their business service in-house, Sirius subcontracts it to AMTC. Only together are the companies competitors to Muzak. If Wikipedians feel that AMTC/SIRIUS shouldn't be listed together, the best move is not to list SIRIUS at all and just leave AMTC. JaedenStormes 18:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

North Carolina?
The HQ is allegedly in South Carolina.

The article says:

 * In a recent poll, 17% of people regarded piped music as "the thing they most detest about modern life".

What poll was that? It would be appropriate to mention that in some References section or something.


 * Will do in due course, but there are plenty of allusions to it on the Web if anyone else wants to research it.Shantavira 19:30, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I've only been able to find a secondary source so far. They don't respond to my emailed enquiry. Will keep trying to find the original source. Shantavira 12:36, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * It's been over a year; I'm deleting the poll claim. Jgm 22:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Two items worthy of mention but need confirmation
There are two items related to Muzak that I think would be worthwhile to include in this article ... if they can be sourced. The first is a claim by Red Skelton, made during a press conference during a visit to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan back in the 1980s, that he wrote original music for the company. (His exact words, and I still remember them from having seen the press conference, was that he composed a piece for Muzak every morning as part of his daily routine). The other claim was a report I recall from the early 1990s that a major rock and roll star -- I believe it was Ted Nugent -- attempted to purchase Muzak in order to disband it "and end the curse" of elevator music. As I say, either of these would be great pieces of information to have in here, but they need verification and citations. Any takers? 23skidoo 20:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

-

Hi

I cannot remember where I read it, but I think that the Muzac Company originally pioneered a way of "transmitting" music through the mains electrical sockets in retail premises so the subscriber could simply plug a special speaker into any mains socket and music (presumbly from a base unit similarly plugged in) would come out. I could be wildly wrong! Any comments?

Thanks 81.79.123.17 20:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

No, you are right.....it was in early 1930s in a New York City business district (if I remember) and was done by Muzak's founder, Major General George Owen Squier, retired from the U.S. Army Signal Corps. His company at that time was called "Wired Radio Inc." which was the pre-cursor to Muzak.

Wired Radio's programmes included a programme of classical music, a programme of dance music, and a news programme.

Wired Radio's original technology is still somewhat in use today, although undoubtedly revised greatly over the years, in many home "wired intercom" devices which you simply plug one unit into the AC line, then do the same with the other. (I think Radio Shack used to sell those years ago.) Similar concepts are also being implemented with new Broadband over Power Lines technologies as well, although their electronic transmission systems are completely different than those I mentioned before.

Interesting to note that Wired Radio also sort of formed the basis for another subscription service we have today, known as "cable television". Shortly before his death Squier made a prediction that wired subscription entertainment services would make it to mainstream America in the future and look at what we have today.........almost 5,000 channels and nuthin' on!! ;o)

MotoFox, amateur Muzak "historian" and (former) Muzakforum yakker

22:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC) (edited by MotoFox 2009 July 04, 2205 GMT)

look angle
The article that look angle directs to does not have the word look in it.

Redirection problem?
When I enter the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak, I get automatically redirected to the page on Elevator music instead of the more logical Muzak Holdings page. Why?

The Eye of Observation 03:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.42.211.208 (talk)

"Muzak fake machine"?
Does "muzak fake machine" from Queen's "Flick of the Wrist" correspond to an actual device? &mdash;141.153.217.32 (talk) 18:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Delivery formats
The section on old delivery formats is overly-long and is almost entirely uncited. If you can come up with citations for any of it, you can add it back into the main article, but for now it's going to live here:

==History of delivery methods== The means of delivering Muzak have changed over the years as technology has advanced.

Via radio
By the time a workable Muzak system was fully developed, commercial radio had become well established, and so the company re-focused its efforts on using radio technology to deliver music to hotels and restaurants. The first actual delivery of Muzak to commercial customers took place in New York City in 1936.

Via records
Pre-World War II, playback of Muzak's library of recordings was via special Gramophone records.

Each sixteen-inch non-microgroove vertical cut recording electrical transcription disc was capable of carring up to 20 minutes of music per side, but in reality, the fidelity during the last five or six minutes or so of any conventionally cut side from the edge to the center, or the first five or six minutes of any side cut center-to-edge was unusable for transmission as the sound coming off the disc would already be muffled and narrow-range in that area, adding insult to injury on the narrow-band electric lines of the period to the point of being unintelligible by the listener.

At first, it was decided that disc sides would be cut alternately from the center to the edge for odd sides and from the edge to the center for even sides as radio had done for live recording for some time.

In addition, it was hoped that programming quieter and more bass-heavy material at the center (beginning of odd sides or ends of even sides) would alleviate this problem, but it did not. Coupled with the fact that some programmers preferred louder more upbeat songs at the beginning and end of their program segments, caused them to cut odd sides outside in and even sides inside out, so that the tops and bottoms of hours would end on an upbeat note - as modern radio programmers do today.

However this practice only served to aggravate a number of the phonograph operators at the transmitter sites who, in the dim light conditions of the playback studios in those days - couldn't keep track or read the label to discern the start location of the disc.

Therefore the decision was made to record all discs conventionally from outside-in, and to limit the first three programs in any one hour to 14 minutes and 30 seconds in length and the last program in the hour to twelve minutes and thirty seconds, leaving the rest of the time to silence. This happenstance decision, resulting from limitations in technology, actually returned a higher level of customer satisfaction compared to the constant music in the previous formats (see Stimulus Progression below).

Conventional home phonographs of the period played 10-inch or 12-inch laterally cut shellacque discs at 78 RPM. Since neither Muzak, as a licensee, nor the labels as content providers, could afford for their programs to escape out into the general public, four safeguards were put in place to prevent that from happening. Similar to the ET records used in commercial radio, and for pretty much the same reasons:

The Muzak programs were cut vertically, otherwise known as the hill-and-dale recording method. Playing a vertically cut record on a lateral-only player results in silence and destroys the disc being played on the very first try.

So even if a home user could find a vertically compliant cartridge for his phonograph, there was still the issue of disc size. Muzak programs were pressed onto 16-inch discs, to ensure that they would be unable to fit on a standard home player.

In addition, the programs were pressed into soft acetate, and later vinylite, so that if someone tried to play them on a conventional phonograph built for the rugged shellacque discs, the weight of the playback arm would destroy the Muzak discs even if they were being played by a vertically compliant cartridge.

And even if those three hurdles were to be overcome, no home phonograph of that period was able to play the 33-1/3 RPM speed at which the discs were recorded so that nobody with a conventional turntable could play them, preserving the copyright integrity.

Of course by then, the Library of Congress had already perfected the 33-1/3 speed as well, to be used in the recording of Talking Books for the Blind and Handicapped, whose players solved three of the four issues above. Their tonearms were lightweight, their platters spun at 33-1/3 and their tonearms could handle 16-inch records. If one could find a vertically compliant transcription phono cartridge from a radio station, Muzak's copyrights could be broached. The more businesses subscribed to the phonograph service, the lower the overall cost became (economy of scale). The company aggressively pursued expanding the use of the music service to workplaces, citing research that indicated that background music improved productivity among workers.

Via reel-to-reel
After the war, Reel-to-reel audio tape recording gradually became available and Muzak adopted it to replaced records. They utilized a reel size of 19-inches on four-track half-inch tape, twice the size of a modern 14-inch reel of digital multi-track tape, running at 3-3/4 IPS. A 7-inch reel of home-recording tape normally contains 1200 feet of standard- 1.5 mil thickness tape, 10-1/2 inch studio reels contain 2,500 feet, and digital multitrack reels carry 5,000 feet, but a 19-inch Muzak reel would carry upwards of 10,000 feet on a single reel. At a speed of 3-3/4 IPS, each track could then play almost nine hours without stopping. Configured as four monaural tracks and an auto-reversing system, one tape could play continuously for over three days straight without repeating. This was important because at such an odd tape length, no sequence of songs would ever be repeated in any one work shift at any one time of the day, for weeks on end.

Via broadcast cart
In the 1960s-1980s larger versions of the endless-loop tape cartridge, popularized as the 8-track tape, were used to deliver the programs. Originally recorded at the same speed as an 8-track, these large versions of broadcast tape cartridges "C-carts" carried 4 one-hour monaural programs at 3-3/4 IPS. Unlike records or reel-to-reels, endless loop tapes play continuously.

Tape and player quality developments such as chrome tape and noise reduction allowed the cartridges and tape speeds to shrink, first to the size of an 8-track with eight monaural programs on a tape running at 1-7/8 IPS, to the size of a modern laptop hard drive and a speed of 15/16 IPS used by the Library of Congress for Talking Books. As a result, before they were replaced with cassettes, the last of the tape cartridges were capable of carrying the same 8-1/2 hours per tape as the original 19-inch reels could carry per track.

Via cassette
Shortly thereafter, special-format chromium cassettes were available, recorded at 1-13/16, exactly halfway between the common speeds of 15/16 and normal cassette speed of 1-7/8, to prevent use on unlicensed hardware.

Via 8mm videocassette
One development of Muzak delivery technology came in the form of Pulse-code modulation programs encoded onto 8mm video format camcorder cassettes. Since there was no video needed on the extra-wide-bandwidth tape, it was possible to encode two hours worth of music on six separate stereophonic tracks, or 12 monaural tracks in the space. Although not widely adapted for stationary systems, the PCM format was widely used on planes, trains and buses throughout the late 80's and early 90's.

Via CD
These gave way to special-format CDs of the 1990s and early 2000s and were the last and best development in physical media program delivery for Muzak before satellite delivery eliminated the need. In addition, it was the first format to deliver true stereophonic sound to a wide audience, as the 8mm format was mostly used for high-quality mono reproduction except for the occasional classical or jazz program in high-end installations.

Released in the late '80s, each disc was recorded at 38.7 kHz with 12-bit sampling instead of the normal CD format with 44.1 kHz and 16 bits to prevent unlicensed use. As most malls and other public buildings already had a primary as well as a backup music system, when stereo audio was adopted, owners simply wired the primary set for the left channel and the backup set for the right channel, which required no further conversions once satellite became available.

Via satellite
In the mid-1990s broadcast delivery via geostationary broadcast satellites, direct to a satellite dish mounted on the location, became the delivery method of choice. Advances in technology minimized losses due to rain fade, wind load and other factors, and with no moving parts to maintain or physical media to deliver, cost of delivery was minimized. MXocross (talk) 06:16, 2013 May 07 (GMT)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was no consensus. --BDD (talk) 17:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Muzak Holdings → Muzak – "Muzak" is the name of the media company described in article, listed on its website as "Muzak LLC." Article is not about holding firm that owns the media company, so current title is inaccurate. (And as a side note, "Muzak" is much more frequently cited/referenced than "Muzak Holdings.") Relisted. BDD (talk) 23:51, 13 June 2013 (UTC) -- Wikipedical (talk) 23:31, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong support per WP:COMMON. Red Slash 04:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Muzak is a common generic term for elevator music. I recommend converting this to a disambiguation page and renaming Muzak Holdings to Muzak (company). Tassedethe (talk) 05:56, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Because it can be associated with elevator music, a hatnote is completely sufficient. You have not addressed the proposal at hand – removing the word "Holdings," which is, as it stands, currently and still inaccurate.  --  Wikipedical (talk) 21:13, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I have addressed the proposal at hand, I oppose it and I recommend moving the article to Muzak (company). Tassedethe (talk) 21:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose "Muzak" should redirect to elevator music, as the primary topic is elevator music in general, and not this company. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 06:59, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * See above. --  Wikipedical (talk) 21:13, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * What of it? "Muszak" should redirect to elevator music, which would then have a hatnote for the disambiguation page -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 06:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose as above; but I would also disagree with Tassedethe - natural disambiguation is preferred to parenthetical, and for this particular topic, we already have a natural title which disambiguates it from the generic term "muzak". bobrayner (talk) 21:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
 * However, I think it would be good to change the muzak redirect - point it towards elevator music instead of here. bobrayner (talk) 09:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per kleenex. —Srnec (talk) 23:00, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Doesn't that comment imply that "Muzak" should redirect to elevator music rather than "Muzak Holdings"? —BarrelProof (talk) 00:21, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, now I think I understand what you're saying. But in the case of kleenex, the article is about the product that became genericized, not the company that originated it. Here, the article about the product that most people refer to as "Muzak" is at elevator music (or background music). Incidentally, maybe the elevator music and background music articles should be merged. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:39, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose: "Muzak" should redirect to elevator music, which already lists "Muzak" in boldface as if it already redirects there (and, prior to an anonymous IP edit in June 2012, it did – and I just reverted that edit, so it now does again). The term "Muzak" can refer either to background music or to the company that produces some of it. Which one is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term? I suggest that it more commonly refers to the music than the company. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:21, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, back to 2008, surprisingly please hear this out. Everyone knows "muzak" is a common generic term for elevator music. And we could recommend ending the undiscussed move history by fixing muzak as a disambiguation page and renaming Muzak Holdings to Muzak (company). as User:Tassedethe.... except for WP:TWODABS


 * Yes "muzak" in a generic sense does relate to elevator music, but all the same we don't have Kleenex redirecting to Facial tissue for a reason. Whatever the colloquial use, in print sources on the music industry there will be an awareness that this term relates to Muzak the company. Its not as if "muzak" is now a common word anyway, I haven't done an ngram against "elevator music", but would be interesting to see the results. Anyone wondering about the now rather odd and quaint word entering muzak will not be disadvantaged by arriving at a lead (with clear hatnote) saying "the term you entered is actually a real company from the 1920s, now you know, move on to elevator music." We get caught up so often in titling discussions of "guidelines" we ourselves have made we sometimes forget this is an encyclopedia, with a mission to inform (God-forbid educate, education is bad, ignorance is good). So support move then let hatnotes give readers the choice of elevator music, do not funnel them away from Muzak without information when entering muzak, per Kleenex. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Muzak is most commonly used to refer to what is on Wikipedia called "elevator music" (although that term is not used in Britain, for example, where lifts are not called elevators, and muzak is actually the commoner term). The comments about "kleenex" show a bit of American parochialism. "Kleenex" only means "tissue" in North America. Elsewhere we say "tissue" and leave Kleenex as a specific brand name!-- Necrothesp (talk) 12:44, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose - "Muzak Holdings" is the name of the corporation; "Muzak" is the corporation's brand name that is often used as a perjorative term for easy-listening music. Leave things as they are and turn the "Muzak" page into a disambiguation with references to "Muzak Holdings" and terminology relating to easy-listening music in general. MXocross (talk) 21:20, 2013 June 16 (GMT)
 * The thing is "Muzak Holdings" is not the name of the corporation in question. It's just Muzak.  Muzak Holdings is the name of the holding company that owns Muzak, but the holding company is not the subject of the article.  --  Wikipedical (talk) 08:04, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * So move to Muzak (company). -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:32, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.