"If music be the food of love, play on..." The famous opening line of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," despite its wary "if," became a cliche for a reason. It draws on the common human experience of music as something associated with good things: in this case, as Duke Orsino surmises, with romance, but also with food, wine, praise, celebration, reverie, ease. People have always turned aside happily from life's dull grind to perform or hear music.
Or they did, before Muzak. Nearly 80 years ago, the man who figured out how to produce "background music" by playing phonograph records through telephone lines, a two-star general named George Squier, took the duke at his word and gave the world a surfeit of music such as it had never known. The well-meaning Squier clearly saw himself as a benefactor to humanity. Piped music had soothed and cheered his own workers, he said. Better yet, it had boosted attendance and production. Workplaces everywhere felt it was worth a try. Department stores latched onto it, convinced that it lulled shoppers, subliminally encouraging them to linger and browse. And as skyscrapers continued to shoot up across the United States, the aural pacifier found its natural home: the elevator, full of jittery riders. Muzak was on its way.
By the 1980s, after numerous changes of hands and technology, the company Squier established was delivering "foreground music" via satellite. Today, it boasts 250,000 subscribers and 80 million listeners worldwide and has gone high-concept. Forget foreground: Muzak now delivers "audio architecture" -- not music, but "extraordinary experiences."