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Muzak music is not supposed to be consciously heard. "Once people start listening they stop working," says Muzak's president Tony Hirsh. That is why its songs never have words. But though Muzak has come to seem synonymous with slushy string tones, the company makes a great effort to keep up to date. Its current repertory of 5,000 includes songs by Michael Jackson and the Police, as well as Cyndi Lauper's All Through the Night. In fact the company records about 1,000 new hits every year. It makes its selections with the help of a computer and broadcasts the tunes by satellite from Stamford, Conn., to 180 receiving stations around the country.
But if Muzak at 50 is so useful and productive and successful and popular (the company says its polls repeatedly show that more than 85% of its customers enjoy what they get), why do some people hate it so passionately? One reason is simply that they believe this system perverts and prostitutes one of life's greatest pleasures, listening to music. And it probably deadens people's ability to enjoy music that they do listen to by choice. And the whole process is coercive. People who did not want to hear radio music pumped into them on Washington buses carried their objections all the way to the Supreme Court, only to have the court rule in 1952 that this invasion of their privacy was not an invasion of their privacy. (Justice William Douglas' dissent reasserted the principle that "the right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.") Composer Jacob Druckman is one man who retains a sensitivity to music even when Muzak tells him not to listen. "I grit my teeth whenever I go into an elevator or a restaurant," says he.
"With any other medium, you can turn your back or close your eyes, but there's no escape from music." —By Otto Friedrich