Honoring a bet between the cities' respective metro operators, the Brussels subway train company piped music by late French singer Johnny Hallyday over its sound system.
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From next month, the soundtrack to our nights out may mellow as Pipedown, a UK-based campaign group fighting for a ban on piped music in public places, joins forces with deafness charity Action on Hearing Loss.
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An online debate about piped music in shops started by Which? Magazine in July 2014 attracted record numbers of comments, most hating piped music in shops.
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One of the campaign’s early successes was achieved by members protesting to Gatwick Airport about the piped music played throughout there. In April 1994 the managers carried out a survey of 68,077 people. Of these 43% said they disliked the piped music, 34% liked it, the rest were indifferent. Gatwick Airport then stopped background music in the main areas.
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The Good Pub Guide 2017 called for a ban on piped music in pubs, already the case in houses managed by the Samuel Smith Brewery.
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Realizing that there are certain public areas where consumer choice simply does not apply – people have to visit hospitals and health centres, for example – Pipedown has turned to seeking parliamentary legislation to have piped music banned in hospitals. On 15 March 2000 Robert Key, then MP for Salisbury, introduced a bill into the House of Commons ‘to prohibit the broadcasting of recorded music in certain public places’, principally hospitals. The bill did not pass but raised the issue of piped music in Parliament. On 16 June 2006 Lord Tim Beaumont, the only Green Party peer, introduced a bill to prohibit piped music and television in hospitals.
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Similar letter/email campaigns have subsequently persuaded supermarket chains such as Sainsbury not to install piped music. More recently, the booksellers Waterstones have agreed to phase it out. Pipedown members can post places – pubs, hotels, restaurants, bookshops – that are free of piped music on the Quiet Corners website. Among recent successes (June 2016) has been helping persuade Marks & Spencer, the 'flagship of the British High Street', to drop its music.
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The campaign has been criticized on several fronts: that it is negative in spirit, even anti-music, also that it is elitist, being supported only by a minority of mostly older people who are out of touch with the commercial reality that customers demand music in most premises. Critics point to the result of experiments such as that by Professor Adrian North on the effects of different sorts of piped music on shoppers which indicate that piped music affects shoppers’ habits in predictable ways. Other more recent studies are cited in support of his claims. Pipedown counters these claims by pointing to chains, such as Wetherspoons pubs, John Lewis/Waitrose, Primark, Aldi and Lidl, which all thrive free of piped music.
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Pipedown is mobilising to oppose her claims with some well-grounded facts. There is another if less acute problem with unwanted piped music in the workplace. People working in music-filled environments also may have no choice about the music playing non-stop through the working day, but they may not like to protest.
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Muzak provided background music to over 300,000 US locations and made most of its money through multi-year contracts. In 2013, the company provided on-hold messaging and video programming, although piped music remained its forte. Mood hoped to use Muzak's US footprint to introduce more digital services. In May 2017, Mood Media filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in an attempt to restructure their debt.
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The 435 bedrooms were double rooms available at single or double tariffs. They were decorated in seven different colour schemes, all of them modern and striking. All rooms were air- conditioned, with each guest permitted to regulate individual temperatures, as well as Radio, TV, and piped music being available in every room, all unusual features at the time. The rooms were available originally for £4 a day.
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Inventory are a collective of British artists, writers and art theorists, founded in 1996. Some of their pieces see them engage in performance art in public spaces. Coagulum (Oxford Street) in 2000, saw them form into a close group on London's Oxford Street, thus disrupting the flow of pedestrians, before entering a shopping centre and dancing to the piped music. For another piece, they played football on The Mall with a rubber skull, using Buckingham Palace and Admiralty Arch as goals.
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From May 1916 to February 1917, he was Chief of the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, the first successor of the Aeronautical Division, before being promoted to major general and appointed Chief Signal Officer during World War I. In 1922, he created Wired Radio, a service which piped music to businesses and subscribers over wires. In 1934, he changed the service's name to 'Muzak'. Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was pronounced like the word square. He was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.
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The Prince of Teck is a Grade II listed pub at Earl's Court Road. A located in the Earl's Court Road, is a nursery and garden shop backing onto Pembroke Square where most of the signs, especially for spring bulbs, are still hand-written and knowledgeable staff mingle with the customers. An early 1940s and 50s Bohemian haunt in the Earl's Court Road was the café, el Cubano, which had piped music and an authentic Italian steam coffee machine, a rarity in those days. It was few doors down from the bakery, Beaton's, whose only other outlet was on the King's Road, Chelsea.
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Elevator music (also Muzak, piped music, or lift music) is a more general term indicating music that is played in rooms where many people come together (that is, with no intention whatsoever to listen to music), and during telephone calls when placed on hold. There is a specific sound associated with elevator music that usually involves themes from "soft" popular music or "light" classical music being performed by slow strings. This type of music was produced, for instance, by the Mantovani Orchestra, and conductors like Franck Pourcel and James Last, peaking in popularity around the 1970s. The term can also be used for kinds of easy listening, piano solo, jazz or middle of the road music, or what are known as "beautiful music" radio stations.
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The success of this new music rested upon the burgeoning radio stations and record industry of late colonial Leopoldville, which often piped music over loudspeakers into the African quarters, called the "Cite". A handful of African clubs (closing early with a 9:30PM curfew for non-Europeans) like "Congo Bar" provided venues, along with occasional gigs at the upscale white clubs of the European quarter, "La ville". The importation of European and American 78 rpm records into Africa in the 1930s and 1940s (called G.V. Series records) featured much Cuban music, a style that was enjoyed by cosmopolitan Europeans and Africans alike. One writer has argued that this music, sophisticated, based on Africa music, and not produced by white colonialists especially appealed to Africans in general, and newly urban Congolese in particular.
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This style of music is sometimes used to comedic effect in mass media such as film, where intense or dramatic scenes may be interrupted or interspersed with such anodyne music while characters use an elevator. Some video games have used music similarly: Metal Gear Solid 4 where a few elevator music-themed tracks are accessible on the in-game iPod, as well as Rise of the Triad: Dark War, and Earthworm Jim. Some people can be deeply annoyed by piped music, and even find it spoils their enjoyment in recreation or drives them out of shops: Eight out of 10 people have left an establishment early because it was too noisy.See Pipedown There are a number of societies, such as Pipedown, that are dedicated to reducing its extent and intrusiveness.
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A portable setup of various live audio production and recording equipment Professional audio, abbreviated as pro audio, refers to both an activity and a category of high quality, studio-grade audio equipment. Typically it encompasses sound recording, sound reinforcement system setup and audio mixing, and studio music production by trained sound engineers, audio engineers, record producers, and audio technicians who work in live event support and recording using mixing consoles, recording equipment and sound reinforcement systems. Professional audio is differentiated from consumer- or home-oriented audio, which are typically geared toward listening in a non- commercial environment. Professional audio can include, but is not limited to broadcast radio, audio mastering in a recording studio, television studio, and sound reinforcement such as a live concert, DJ performances, audio sampling, public address system set up, sound reinforcement in movie theatres, and design and setup of piped music in hotels and restaurants.
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The participants of the 3rd Oxcars in 2010 were the writer José Luis Sampedro, The Pinker Tones, Kate Madison and Actors at Work Productions (creators of the film Born of Hope), dance company Akram Khan, the writer Belén Gopegui, Miguel Brieva, Triolocría, design studio Lava with their Free Magenta campaign (against the Deutsche Telekom patent on the colour magenta), gastronomic blogger Txaber Allué, hip-hop crew At Versaris, the Reactable (collaborative electronic music instrument), the free culture and copyleft festival Te Pica la Barba (with the animated short film Sopa, by Irene Iborra and Jossie Malis), Rojadirecta (a portal that offers sports broadcast through streaming or P2P applications), Koulomek, the Tweetpeli (a collaborative film made through Twitter), leerestademoda.com, Ploomba (a free piped music service), Jerzy Celichowski (from Open Society Archives), European Digital Rights, Public Domain Day, La Máquina que guía los rayos del sol (animations), Martín Hernández (MotionGraphics) and Kevin Nicoll (illustration).
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