When you call the local Muzak offices and get put on hold, you get to hear a sales pitch for Muzak's on-hold service, just one of the many the company offers that set it apart from its elevator-music origins. Spend more than two minutes with any of the local representatives of the nearly 80-year-old Muzak and you'll get an earful about how the company has evolved to encompass far more than its bland, elevator-focused stereotype. The parent company, of which the local branch is a franchise, has embarked on an extensive rebranding campaign in recent years. Visit Muzak's website and you'll be bombarded by fancy graphics, modern music and pictures of the company's "Music Architects": young, hip-looking musicians and technicians who design the programming for the company's 70 channels of music.
Although the company's website boasts about the ultra-modern design of its Fort Mill, South Carolina, home office and the youth and creativity of its staff, the local office is just your average cubicle-filled space in a nondescript office park. As Regional Sales Manager Kevin Walsh explains, the local staffers don't get the creative outlet that the national office provides. They're salespeople, mostly, dressed conservatively, as you'd expect salespeople to dress, and selling businesses the experience that is modern Muzak. (While I was in the Muzak office, they had on "7890," a sort of Mix 94.1-esque station.)
Although Walsh's background is in food and beverage management, he's the odd man out in the office. "I'm probably the only person in the building who's not musically inclined," he says, and then introduces me to Senior Account Executive Tony Amendola Jr., who's been with Muzak for eight years and spent 15 years before that as a professional musician, playing drums for the likes of Smokey Robinson and Martha and the Vandellas. Avuncular and less buttoned-down than his boss, Amendola sees Muzak as an extension of his work in the music business.
Whether or not Muzak's quest to hip-ify itself has worked, the business remains enormously successful. Walsh and Amendola tell me that Muzak is the fourth most-recognized brand name in the world. The company's nearest competitor, DMX, has been around for 11 years compared to Muzak's almost 80, and Muzak controls 70 percent of the marketplace when it comes to businesses that subscribe to music services.
South Central Communications, the media company that owns the local franchise, also owns several TV and radio stations, but Muzak has proven to be one of its most reliable holdings. "When September 11 happened, they analyzed their business, and obviously the revenue stream from radio and television for advertising was kind of dried up—people weren't spending a lot of money on that—and they couldn't understand why their business was continuing to be very profitable," Walsh says. "And it turns out that it was the Muzak franchise. Because every month, people will pay their whatever it is, $50 a month, for the music service continually. Our average customer is with us 17 years."
Most clients use one of Muzak's music channels, usually delivered via satellite, which provides content that varies from stereotypical elevator music to pop hits to classic rock and even heavy metal. The company also provides custom programs, crafted by the hipsters in the home office. Its burgeoning on-hold program offers businesses, including the Greenspun Media Group (parent company of Las Vegas Weekly), the chance to advertise themselves while customers wait for their phone calls to be picked up. When I call my office and ask to be put on hold, a sharp, confident female voice informs me, over some jaunty music, that Las Vegas Weekly is "edgy."
Walsh denies that clients have ever asked for subliminal messages to be inserted into their Muzak, although wandering through the Boulevard Mall and the Boca Park shopping center (two local clients), I have to work really hard to hear the music (of the bland, instrumental variety), and probably wouldn't notice if it were subtly encouraging me to buy things. I remember hearing Clay Aiken's "Invisible" and the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way." I ask the clerks at a Nextel kiosk in the mall if they ever notice the music. One jokes that it helps to drown out the sounds of gunshots, but the other praises the classical music that comes on at night. "It soothes you as you close," he says, only slightly smiling.
There was at least one instance of Muzak being used for nefarious purposes, though. Walsh recounts a story that occurred, naturally, before his time, passed down by a predecessor: "One of the former operations managers here—he now works in a different office—he had told me about how they did music for a casino, and instead of actually playing music, they played the sound of coins, like a lot of slot winnings. How effective it was in the casino I don't know, but people were given the impression that everybody was winning in that casino."
Mostly Muzak is benign. Even if it's no longer bland elevator music, it still blends in with your surroundings. Leaving the Muzak offices, I can't really remember what music was playing as I talked to Walsh and Amendola. Chances are, however, that I'll be humming it later.