Have A Very Muzak Christmas

December 3, 2023 8:05 PM

Okay, yes, I know... Muzak is a brand name and this is actually Customusic.. but here are 8 hours of vintage department store Christmas music Customusic tapes, which as far as I can tell are not repeated [Wikipedia], but also are I am assured in a musical style that nobody under 30 has any experience with.
posted by hippybear (54 comments total)

But...but...I though the point was that we suffered through this so future generations wouldn't have to?
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:15 PM on December 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

The point is, you can just not click to comment on a post on MetaFilter if your comment is going to be the first about the subject and is going to shit on it right out of the gate.

I mean, Greg, I get it. It's the Paul Lynde Center Square impulse. But again and again we're told not to do this. I fall for it repeatedly. So here's a friendly reminder, and just let's both try to remember not to do it.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on December 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

I must be getting old, because I prefer that to Mariah Carrey or wham.
posted by Keith Talent at 8:32 PM on December 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

Would you call the "Little Dummer Boy" at 00:11:24 Tejano? I feel like keys and marimba disqualifies it as Mariachi.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:33 PM on December 3, 2023

Okay. I prefer Marriah Carrey to "Little Drummer Boy". Rum pum pum fuck off.
posted by Keith Talent at 8:38 PM on December 3, 2023

This is literally the stuff of nightmares. Within the first few seconds I found myself in the cigarette-scented husky child department of infinite despair. Damn you, hippybear. Damn you to hell.
posted by MrVisible at 8:40 PM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

I don't care for today's Christmas music stations and most vocal Christmas songs, but this is quite pleasant to have on at a low volume on my laptop. Plus I don't have to be actually walking around K Mart or Sears. Thanks!
posted by apartment dweller at 8:45 PM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Damn you, hippybear. Damn you to hell.

I'm pretty sure this had already happened, but I do welcome your input. Because that Yahweh guy is an asshole, demanding constant praise from everyone and even the slightest looking away means you've scorned him and thus end up in hell. With me.

Less work this way, really.
posted by hippybear at 8:48 PM on December 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I love this music so much I can’t even muster the decency to be ashamed of my poor taste
posted by congen at 8:54 PM on December 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

For what it is worth, Muzak/Elevator music/Piped Music and Library Music is getting a kind of re-evaluation these days. I think a big part of it is that there is a category of music (and demand for it) that appeared in the streaming age of background music. Chill beats to study to, unobtrusive jazz while you cook, minimalist ambient piano while you drink tea and do the crossword, etc. Another aspect is hip hop and electronic music sampling and the last is record collectors finding value in the rarity of music that wasn't accessible to the masses.

Anyways, some articles for the curious. This is all just to say that people under 30 are more aware of this style of music than you might expect, although they are unlikely to call it Muzak.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 8:59 PM on December 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

Okay, so I kind of...love this? Why did stores get rid of it?
posted by LlamaHat at 9:18 PM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

I gotta say, public music (now) is the worst. Every place seems to require music. If it’s music I like, I’m suspicious of some algorithm that’s figured some pathway into my soul in order to sell me something. Or it’s not my music, and I’m distracted by trying to figure out why anyone likes it. This, on the other hand, is quite pleasant. It makes me want to ride an elevator.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 9:36 PM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've been disturbed by how much grocery store music seems directly targetted at my childhood. Don't like it.

This on the other hand does exactly what the lo-fi hip hop stations like lofi girl does - just something to tickle the brain and distract it. It's a little unsettling at full volume and attention levels, but in the background... it's definitely better than the 20th replay of some vocal track
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:29 PM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I mean, it's decidedly mediocre but in an unobtrusive way; seems infinitely more respectful of the employees than playing the same eight vocal pop tunes on repeat.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 12:52 AM on December 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

This, on the other hand, is quite pleasant

I don't know if I'd call it pleasant, but if you've ever been in a supermarket or mall or something that seems like it's supposed to have music and DOESN'T, that's really creepy and jarring. All you hear is other people. So the inoffensive music is really the least bad option.
posted by ctmf at 1:06 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Okay, so I kind of...love this? Why did stores get rid of it?

I am not a crooked music executive, but I strongly suspect it's because back then they had to pay artists much higher royalties for playing their music in public than they do now. It was cost-effective to re-record the songs using anonymous session musicians. Nowadays they just play the originals, and the artist gets their 0.00000001 of a penny if the record companies can be bothered to send it.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:11 AM on December 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Here in England we had the Top of the Pops LP series. Not only did you hear these in lifts and department stores; people also actually bought them, in the hundreds of thousands.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:14 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I prefer this to what you hear in stores. Listening to this means you’re not going to hear Jack Johnson add another verse to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
posted by pxe2000 at 3:20 AM on December 4, 2023

Another article on library music, but in the context of an all-but-unwatchable 1970s grindhouse movie.
posted by pxe2000 at 3:28 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is excellent background music for a Christmas party, thanks!
posted by blendor at 5:44 AM on December 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

My elderly aunt has an Alexa and as far as I can tell she uses it for two purposes: to set timers for cooking, and to play non-stop muzak. The muzak drives me nuts because the tunes, stripped of any distinctiveness, become hard to recognize no matter how familiar you are with them. I can't concentrate because I'm typically sitting there trying to force my brain to recognize an old pop song which I know very well. One time I saw my dentist in a restaurant—someone I've known for thirty years—and I couldn't place him even after talking to him. Same kind of thing. Shorn of context, it's just notes (sometimes with an added salsa beat).
posted by jabah at 6:12 AM on December 4, 2023

I've decided to love this music unironically. Seeburg, Muzak, test card music, it's basically part of our heritage at this point; at first, when these sorts of albums started creeping back into public consciousness, it was possible to sneer and giggle, but it has really won me over. (The last FPP like this, I wound up looking for an app that would make things sound faraway and dreamy--NCH's DeskFX works for that, if you also would like your vintage retail music to sound like it's being transmitted from a small radio under the house.)
posted by mittens at 6:18 AM on December 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yes, but what about Hooked on Classics. That's a thing that was enormous but has died right the fuck out. Endless sixteen bar excerpts of Pops favourites with a boots-cats drum track and occasional electric guitar solos. I am listening to it right now and it is the little death that brings total annihilation.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:23 AM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I definitely had a flashback to Seven Corners Mall, shopping for Christmas presents. Thanks hippybear!
posted by tavella at 6:26 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sorry to those of you who have negative childhood associations with this music, but this is great. Thanks for sharing!
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:15 AM on December 4, 2023

but what about Hooked on Classics

I think all of us at one time or another have been racing down the highway in our 1977 Trans Am on the run from the law, and needed the soothing presence of classical on public radio. It's the best of both worlds!
posted by mittens at 7:28 AM on December 4, 2023

Okay, so I kind of...love this? Why did stores get rid of it?

I am not a crooked music executive, but I strongly suspect it's because back then they had to pay artists much higher royalties for playing their music in public than they do now. It was cost-effective to re-record the songs using anonymous session musicians. Nowadays they just play the originals, and the artist gets their 0.00000001 of a penny if the record companies can be bothered to send it.

Record companies don't pay out these royalties - PROs like ASCAP and BMI do. So if you, as a composer or publisher (not as a performer on the recording), have a % credit on a song that gets played over the speakers at a Macy's or whatever, then you are going to get some $$ based on how many times that song was played, at what time, how many people were in the store, etc. It comes from the blanket license that MACYs pays for the rights to play music associated with that PRO. It is, probably, pennies. But it isn't because record companies are greedy - which they are!
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:46 AM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

I love this kind of music and always have. Thank you very much for the link. Merry Christmas!
posted by JanetLand at 7:56 AM on December 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Also: thank you, hippybear, for this playlist! It is up there with the K-Mart Tapes in terms of pleasant nostalgia triggers for this aging GenXer. It brings back memories of the Christmas monorail at Midtown Village in Rochester, NY. When I was a kid visiting my family up there, we'd go ride it. It had a giant fake mountain with a tunnel in it that the monorail would go through. The stuff of childhood magic.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:11 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Putting a word in for the Deaf community.
I recently took my scratched lenses back to my optometrist for a replacement under warranty. Last month he moved to a different location and this was our first time at the newly built office complex.
Between the echo chamber of a waiting room and the low beat of background music, I couldn't hear a thing that the receptionist said. My husband had to repeat her words to me. Otherwise I probably would have asked for written directions.
My hearing aids only made the background music louder and more distracting, so I muted them.
I intend to discuss the problem when I pick up the new glasses. But in the meantime the general use of holiday music has as much attraction as traffic noise.

Meanwhile -- no, I do not like canned generic tunes on constant replay. Give me the classics like Bing Crosby and Burl Ives. A little Peanuts Christmas piano riff or Boris Karloff's "You're A Mean One, Mister Grinch!" sets me right into the holiday spirit.
posted by TrishaU at 8:18 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love this almost as much as my two pink Christmas trees.

Possibly more.
posted by freakazoid at 8:47 AM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

One last comment - these tunes aren't really "canned" or "generic" - they're just instrumental arrangements of classic Christmas tunes, made by real musicians and arrangers in real studios. They just don't have vocals. The "canned" quality came from the cheap speakers common in department stores which emphasized the midrange, kind of like a telephone. The actual master recordings likely sound fantastic. Even this recording sounds good!

Divorced from the context of crowded, fluorescent-lit stores, they are beautiful cultural artifacts.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:52 AM on December 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

Honestly, I wish I could find some actual Muzak recordings from the Seventies. I spent SO much time in the orthodontist office when I was a kid and they had the actual Muzak service and there were some really good, interesting, and inventive arrangements of popular radio tunes. They would regularly make Muzak versions of stuff on the Top 40 so you could hear, say Styx doing Come Sail Away on Rock FM and then hear it being done on strings and marimba at the doctor's office.

I would LOVE to find some of that stuff. But it seems to be completely gone.
posted by hippybear at 9:28 AM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wish I could find some actual Muzak recordings from the Seventies

Some are on eBay but my god they're expensive!
posted by mittens at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2023

Here you go, hippybear!
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:30 AM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

OMG, yes, that is exactly the taste and texture I'm talking about!
posted by hippybear at 10:39 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it has always sort of annoyed me that when as an adult I started digging into the music of my childhood in a way that I didn't really engage with as a kid and realized that the five and dime down the way was playing a _lot_ of good disco as arranged for light strings and brass in addition to the traditional big band music.

On the other hand I almost never notice background music these days, and I don't know if it's because it isn't played as much, or if I've successfully learned to tune it out.
posted by Kyol at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2023

They would regularly make Muzak versions of stuff on the Top 40 so you could hear, say Styx doing Come Sail Away on Rock FM and then hear it being done on strings and marimba at the doctor's office.

I have never forgotten the time I heard Muzak Another Brick in the Wall while I was visiting someone in a hospital.
posted by JanetLand at 11:34 AM on December 4, 2023

See? That's my point! Where ARE those recordings? They have to still exist, unless Muzak went all BBC and erased their old tapes.
posted by hippybear at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2023

This is great! About 1h48 in there was real tape static and sound drop off... so that must mean it's legit...

Also: "THAT'S IT!"
posted by JoeXIII007 at 11:50 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

*An interesting side note: These recordings still belong to Muzak (now Mood Media) and have moved with the company over their many relocations. This library of records has moved from New York to Seattle and is currently archived in Ft. Mill, South Carolina. Many of the recordings remain untouched to this day.
posted by JanetLand at 12:56 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I've been in a thousand elevators. I can only think of one time I ever heard music in an elevator.
posted by SoberHighland at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2023

Jesuschristalmightygod, I had no idea there was So. Much. Hooked on Classics. Wow. Why would you do that?

Well, all right, I guess it's pretty obvious. When the disco-ed dun-dun-dun-dun joke unexpectedly became a megahit they must've been like, "Wha...at? Well, shit, what the fuck, why not just destroy everything, maybe something else will stick!"

Okay, I'm going to get back to work, now, and try really hard to forget that link is up there so that maybe I can stop going back to click around randomly to see what else has been given The Treatment.
posted by Don Pepino at 2:20 PM on December 4, 2023

There's also a very difficult to quantify thing were there were different companies making various tracks of this sort, but the companies themselves had rather different characters to their final product. That's sort of why I was all "oh yes, THAT is Muzak" when I heard that link up the thread to an actual Stimulis Progression sequence.

One thing about Muzak as a company was, they had different channels of musical programming that each had a different intended mood effect. Some were meant to encourage lingering, some meant to be calming, and others like that progression meant to increase energy.

Actual Muzak would also always have a pause at the end of every progression, like a bit of a breath of fresh air.

Anyway I've been poking around and now I've found Muzak Archives, which includes links to listen and talks about the Progressions and stuff.

Check out this one, which includes Feelings, Go Away Little Girl, Welcome Back, and Disco Lady. Looks like it might be on Spotify, which I don't have an account for. Doesn't seem to be on the other services that it claims to link to at the bottom, however.
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Okay! Here's 5.5 hours of Muzak Stimulis Progressions... with time stamps.
posted by hippybear at 3:18 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Xmas Muzak, an Xmas Muzak tape on a mall PA turns into a major plot point in encounters with space aliens in All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis (which I just read for the first time yesterday, actually).

(personally I don't like excessive (it's never not excessive) Xmas music in shopping places or broadcast radio, and I'm not alone.)
posted by ovvl at 3:24 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Seeburg 1000 Background Music System has joined the conversation (and doesn't want to be left out):

Twelve Songs for Christmas (sl spotify)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:33 PM on December 4, 2023

Oh, I didn't know we were talking about, like, streaming Muzak--Spotify has SO MUCH OF IT. I have like a 10-hour playlist for when I need zone-out happy nonstressful music.
posted by mittens at 4:55 PM on December 4, 2023

hippybear: The point is, you can just not click to comment on a post on MetaFilter if your comment is going to be the first about the subject and is going to shit on it right out of the gate.


To be charitable to ourGreg_Ace, I took it to mean “we all grew up being subjected to this stuff as kids; it’s wild that we now choose to seek it out on our futuristic hand computers for unironic enjoyment”.

This is great stuff, thanks for sharing.
posted by dr_dank at 5:26 PM on December 4, 2023

This has made me so happy today as I turned it back on whenever my 13 month old pointed to the record player for more music ... which happens a lot!

Great throwback to the calmer shopping experiences of my childhood!
posted by icaicaer at 5:40 PM on December 4, 2023

I like that this music was posted by the "Attention Kmart Shoppers" channel.
posted by eckeric at 7:14 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've listened to the Seeburg 1000 website on and off for a good long while. (I think the Blue turned me onto it)

When I turned my garage into my office, I did seriously think about getting my hands on a Seeburg unit and installing it, but cooler heads prevailed and I got a streaming gizmo instead. I should get a Seeburg shell instead and set that up.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:46 AM on December 5, 2023

Ron Geesin, whose proto-industrial, ambient monophonic synthesizer sounds make already unbearable scenes in Watkins’ film that much punchier. Geesin was famous for

...original music in Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, including the main theme as well as some key bits in Fall Out, the concluding episode. It was on the three-CD soundtrack for that program where I first encountered Library Music, a lot of which is heard in The Prisoner.
posted by Rash at 5:37 PM on December 5, 2023

Wasn't the theme music for The Prisoner written by Ron Grainer, who had earlier jotted down the notes (and so got the sole credit for years) that Delia Derbyshire radiophionic'd into the Doctor Who theme?
posted by Devoidoid at 7:06 AM on December 7, 2023