Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

Muzak got a bad reputation as bland garbage music. In this classic episode, we aim to set the record straight.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Hey there, everybody. It's me, Josh. And for this week's S Y S K selects, I've chosen our 2021 episode on music. And you might ask who could possibly like the noise some omnipresent annoyance that was music. Well, me, I like music. So there, but if you're not over 40, you might not even know that there was a time you couldn't step

out in public from department stores, those are in something we call malls, to elevators without schmaltzy string arrangements of pop music pummeling you with their saccharine sound. And you know what? You're the worse off for not having experienced it. Instead, you can experience this episode. And I hope having experienced it. Instead, you can experience this episode, and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there and there's Dave C. Kustin. I said it right this time. I thought it was Kustin. No? If you're in France, that's how you would say it. But here in the United States, you say Kustin.

Can I start this off by saying something? Oh boy, I'm worried about what you're gonna say, but okay. Well, this episode is on Musak, and I started thinking last night, I was thinking about your love of Musak, which is not at all ironic. Not in the least, but you can't say that kind of thing these days, people don't believe you.

I know, it's true, Everyone, I know Josh very well. And I was thinking of your, and I like all kinds of music too, but, you know, in my heart, I'm a rock and roll guy. And I was thinking about your top musical genres that are above rock and roll in your picking order. Not in order. I counted easy listening, music, disco, art rock, kraut rock. And I probably missed a couple. Kraut rock is below rock and roll. I want to like kraut rock, it just doesn't quite jive with me. I like some, but not all of it.

And then stuff, I think art rock is sort of that avant-garde. Like, I don't, you don't love Yoko, but you certainly are a bit of a Yoko apologist. Sure. Grace Jones, stuff like that. Oh, I love Grace Jones for sure. What about Talking Heads? They go in there too, right? Oh, they'd probably be. I mean they literally went to art school together. Yeah, I mean they kind of span from art rock to new wave to like world music by the time they finished. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean I certainly love the Talking Heads, but all of those for you wave to like world music by the time they finished. Yeah, yeah I know. But yeah, I mean I certainly love the talking heads, but all of those for you are above good old fashioned rock and roll I think.

Yeah, you also left out 90s techno. I've been listening to a lot of that lately too. Like Alternate and the Prodigy and everything. But you love music, you really do. I do. I do too actually. do too, actually. I'm so glad. I don't know how much I'll like, I will listen to some of that stuff, and we'll talk about Eno in here, of course. Old Sour Puss Brian Eno.

But I love listening to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as an antidote to music. Again, we'll talk about that more later. But I do like, in certain circumstances, that Muzak thing is really great to have on in my house as background music. And it serves that same purpose. One of the big reasons why, too, is because you can get stuff done with it.

Like, lyrics can be so distracting. They just latch onto your brain and say, no, no, no, pay attention to me. I'm talking to you now. Musac does the opposite of that. It says, go, be free, but also enjoy this. Like, there's like a whole part of your brain that Musac can tap into that doesn't require your conscious thought,

but it still produces like good feelings. And, you know, like people just smack music around, like it's just, it's so bland and it's so soulless. And I totally disagree with that. Like if you actually stop and listen to music, it's really, really technically proficient. It's frequently well done. It's often very clever and creative and inventive,

which is really saying something because you're doing this in the confines of covering an existing song in a way that makes it familiar and easy to recognize, but also takes away any intrusiveness that it might have. It's tough to do. And I really, I just, I love music. You're absolutely right. Like I listened to music this whole time.

Not just when we were researching music today, but also when I was researching the Havana syndrome. And I realized like, this is my normal thing. This is the same stuff I listened to when I'm researching anyway. Yeah, and we can go ahead and dispel a couple of, or not myths, but clear up a couple of things right off the bat.

First of all, Musac is a name brand, and people can kind of collectively use the term Musac, or have collectively used that term for what's called like potted plant music, or elevator music, or shopping music. But it is actually a brand name, which we'll get to the history of. And then the second thing is, it gets the name elevator music. Part of the myth is that people said, well, they put it on elevators because people were

afraid to death of elevators early on, and it calmed people down, or it covered up the noise of the clanking elevators. I'd never heard that before, had you? Yeah, neither one of those things are true. Total myth. elevators. I'd never heard that before, had you? Yeah, neither one of those things are true. Total myth, my guess is that it was played on elevators, and because you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet, it just was way more noticeable than like in a big office full of people working.

So people called it elevator music. That's my guess. Right, yeah. I mean, yeah, there wasn't music on elevators before, but for several decades in the 20th century, like, there weren't many elevators you could get on because people didn't have elevators in their house. So it was a public building you were in where they weren't playing music of

some form, very frequently, mus-ack. That great Blues Brothers scene? Yeah. Hut, hut frequently, musack. That great blues brother scene. Yeah. Hot, hot, hot, hot. Yeah, because they're going up to the Cook County Assessor's Office and there's the entire Chicago Police Department is after them. But they're forced to get on this elevator and the girl from Ipanema is playing.

I think my favorite part of that scene is there's just dozens and hundreds of cops and SWAT guys just, you know, hut hut hut hut hut when they're rappelling and doing all this stuff. And then there's the one shot of the lone guy rappelling down the side of the building and he's by himself just going, hut hut hut hut. Yeah, that's a good one. So funny.

There's another scene too from around the era, a few years later, from Airplane 2, where it's like ripped torn. I believe it's ripped torn. The Artie from the Larry Sanders Show. And I don't know the other guy he's talking to, but anyway, they're walking and talking and they have to get on an elevator. The elevator door opens, and it's just blaring, like eardrum-shattering decibel MacArthur Park. And they have to get on.

People are coming off the elevator, like with their hands to their ears, like with splitting headaches from this. But it's just completely the opposite of what elevator music's supposed to be like. But it's a good little scene, too, as far as elevator music goes. Well, I mean But it's a good little scene, too, as far as elevator music goes. Well, I mean, that's kind of one of the points, too,

is Muzak has long been a movie trope and a TV trope and then been lampooned in scenes just like the Blues Brothers scene where there's something chaotic going on and then you cut back to the sound of Muzak playing wherever the other scene is sitting. Right, yeah. Very, very fun stuff. But that started, I guess it started with the Blues Brothers, which came out in 1980.

But before that, that was like, Muzak was not really lampoon. I mean, not everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get a little backlash in the late 60s, early 70s, as we'll see. But there was a very significant chunk of the 20th century, again, from maybe 1950 to 1980, we'll say, where everywhere you went in public, including if you took a Greyhound bus, or if you were on a plane, or you happened to be

in Air Force One, or you were at the mall, in an elevator, at your office, everywhere, Muzak was playing. There was Muzak playing everywhere. It was just a part of life that was inescapable, actually. Yeah, so let's go back in time and talk about the inventor of Muzak. And this is sort of a fun fact of Muzak. The man's name is George Square. It is spelled Squire, but The man's name is George Square.

It is spelled Squire, but he swears it's pronounced Square. I'm really impressed, man. I had not come up with that one. Or he swore it was pronounced Square. Yeah, that's kind of one of the funny jokes. Like the guy who invented Musacks was Square. Yeah. But Major General George Square was born in 1865,

if you believe that. And he has just a laundry list of accomplishments as a human being. He was, he earned a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in electrical science. He was an Army engineer with a PhD, I think the first one. And he was, I believe, the lead signal corps officer for the Army as well? He was. He also was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, which connects this episode to the other one today.

That's right. Because he came up with something called a tree telephone. He figured out how to use any tree, but preferably one with fully-leaved, I guess. I don't know what you'd call that. As a receiver and transmitter for radio signals, he figured out how to use a tree, a living tree for that. Here's another old fun fact. He was one of the first airplane passengers ever because he was way into human flight and got together with the Wright brothers.

And in 1906, consulted with them and they said, hey, why don't you take a ride in our new little biplane? You'll probably live. Right. I looked at the document for our Wright brothers episode and he did not appear. I don't think we mentioned him. But he might have been the first airline passenger from what I saw. Yeah, where he really made a big name for himself

pre-Musac was this invention, which is what we call multiplexing, which is he figured out, or maybe wire wireless communications, which is something he worked on with the army. He basically figured out how to get multiple uses out of single telephone lines. Telephone wires were, you know, there are only so many, so you were really limited as to what you could do with them and how many people could use them. So

he basically figured out a way to increase their output and efficiency by multiplexing and by sending superimposing high frequency radio signals over those low frequency telegraph signals, basically just allowing you to use the wire at the same time, the same wire. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's like if you think of like a wave, if it's low frequency, there's big wide gaps in between, you can fit a higher frequency that's

tighter and squished together in those gaps, but you're still using the same line. And this was the guy who came up with that. That's an enormous advancement in telecommunications that we're still putting use today in some applications but definitely helped the early internet along. It was just a huge contribution to humanity. Like, forget even just Muzak, like just that alone would probably warrant like an episode for George Square.

Yeah, and I think he was like, everyone should be able to use this. So I'm going to open source it and everyone can use this new multiplexing technology. AT&T came along and said, we'll use it. And then, you know what, you've stole it from us, actually. Right. He came up with it, but since he left it open, they decided to just take it from him and sue him for it. I think he sued them, but it didn't work. That's right. You're right. So, he still was able to use this wire wireless

technology with multiplexing. And at the time people were starting to get into radio broadcasts, but radio, wireless radio, like that you would just have in your house, it's picking up radio waves at a station, that was not widespread at the time. So George Squier said, you know what, I understand people want music in their house, I'm going to give it to them. I'm going to use that multiplexing technology and I'm going to run sound waves

over the electrical wires that go into the house. And I'm gonna sell this, it is brilliant. I'm gonna sell this service to people's homes for $1.50 a month, about $20 today. And it's just part of your utility bill because it's coming in through your electrical company. And there's actually a section of Cleveland called the Lakewood, I believe Lakewood area, that was the pilot for this wired wireless radio that George Square invented.

The problem was by the time they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing. And so we had this really great idea that just no longer had an application. Yeah, he basically invented the first music subscription service. Exactly. Yeah, and he had multiple channels too. Like when you subscribed, you got news, you got dance music. There was like I think three different channels you could choose from. Howard Stern. Yep. Howard Stern was on back then.

Baba Bui. So he had that technology though and he said, you know what, this is a good idea though. Maybe I can think of how to use this in offices and stores. And in 1934, he looked up at Kodak, very successful corporation, and said, I love that name and I love music, let's just call it Musac and history changed and maybe we should take a break. Okay, let's do it. All right, we'll be right back. So, in the parlance of today, Chuck, George Square and his Musac Corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets. And that just knocked it out of the park because it turned out that there were a lot of companies,

hotels, restaurants, clubs, I think the Stork Club was an early customer that said, you know what, it's really gonna make our place seem fancy if we've got music piping in all the time. So yes, we would like to sign up for your service. And that's really where Musac kind of started to take off. Yeah, so Musac, I mean, we haven't even said what it is.

Surely people know, but Musac are instrumental tracks. And you did mention that there were no vocals. So we kind of hinted at it. That's a big one, yeah. But they're instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of anything you can think of. I mean, I've heard some music of some heavy rock. It can be classical music.

It can be old standards. But the point is they are instrumental versions that are re-recorded. They don't just take the vocals out. It's not karaoke style. Right. It is re-recorded, arranged, and recorded by professional, really good musicians, orchestras sometimes. And it is, that's what it is. And it's great. The end. And very frequently, it's made into a much more mellow version of itself.

Like any rough edges are taken off. Since they take the vocals out, it's not like that vocal melody is non-existent any longer. They just replace it with something else. So if they're trying to go for something like a little more upbeat or up-tempo, they'll replace the vocals with, say, like a saxophone. If they're trying to do something a little more mellow, they'll replace the vocals with a string section. Yeah, or a harp, perhaps.

Yeah, that's one of the things that Muzak is very famous for is like, what's called masses of strings, just strings upon strings. And in fact, one of the early, I guess, big name groups that produced Muzak was called 101 Strings. They probably were absolutely accurate in that.

Like there's just tons of strings everywhere. Violins, cellos, violas, every string instrument you can throw at it, they just layer upon layer in these songs. It's one of the hallmarks of Musac. Yeah, and there are many versions of Antonio Carlos Chavim's Girl From Ipanema, but the music version is one of the most popular and that 101 Strings version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. I do encourage people to go watch the YouTube though of Frank Sinatra and Jobim singing that song live on TV.

Because it's great in every way. They're just sitting next to each other, and the shot isn't wide at first, and they're just sort of singing back and forth to each other, and Frank's doing his thing. And then it cuts to the wide. And Frank is like totally kicked back with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand.

Exactly like you would hope, but he looks like, I mean, he looks like he just, not rolled out of bed, because he's put together, but he looks like he rolled from his wicker bag to his wicker chair for this performance. Can I get some cocaine in here, baby? That's Joe Piscopo as Frank Sinatra. Have you ever listened to Joe Beam's stuff? Oh yeah.

I love that old lounge stuff. It's really great Brazilian stuff. Yeah, his record, Stone Flower, is just a masterpiece from beginning to end. Yeah, that's good party music. Yeah, that's another thing though too, is like it's so mellow that to take that kind of music and then make it into Muzak is like, it's almost like it takes a certain amount of audacity. Right.

You know? Like I was listening to, I found, so there's, I want to point people to two different music records that are on YouTube. One is called More Than Music, Period and Environment. It's a 1981 music record. And it has a version of Sailing. Christopher Cross' Sailing, one of the most mellow. Yeah, which is already music to sleep to.

Exactly. They figured out how to basically make you lose control of your bladder listening to this. Music to let your bed do. Yeah. That's a good one. And then the other one is called The Blue Album. And it is from 1974, I believe. And it's just both of them are really great.

That's good, good introductions to Musac if you're not into it already. All right. So Musac is trucking along in the 30s. They get to the 40s and they think, you know what, we need a better way to sell this stuff and to pitch this to businesses and corporations. So why don't we hire some people to research music and to figure out what kinds of music keep people happy and working? And because people, you know, they work hard in the morning and then they sort of lag a

bit before lunch and then they really lag sort of a couple of hours after lunch. So, why don't we do this? Why don't we study it? Let's call it stimulus progression. It's a bit pseudoscience. It makes sense. Isn't though? It is in that it's not been proven. It makes sense to everyone who I feel like knows about it.

Like sure, music can pick you up and make you work harder. But it's pseudoscience in that it in that I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven. I got you. Okay. Yeah, because I keep seeing it just dismissed as pseudoscience, but then there were plenty of early studies that were done by legitimate industrial

psychologists and other efficiency experts, that kind of thing, that showed that there really was a significant improvement in productivity or less sick I think, that showed that there really was a significant improvement in productivity or less sick days, that kind of stuff, in places that had Muzak compared to places that didn't have Muzak pumped into the office. Yeah, I think maybe their specific claims

about a work day might have been a little, I mean, everywhere I read said it was basically not a marketing scam, but a marketing tool that they kind of invented. I got you. So one thing to say about this, we're going to talk about it in a second, stimulus progression, is that they did kind of plow money that they were making. They were making a lot of money starting in the late 40s, early 50s.

They plowed it back into research to basically come up with scientific evidence to back up their claims, which you can really kind of see the ghost of George Square still looming over the company, you know, this decade or so after he died. It's always been this kind of science-interested, if not science-based company that's also been an early adopter of technology, as we'll see. Yeah. I mean, that is certainly fair. It was never just like, hey, we're just going to play a bunch of what people might consider droll background music. Like, they really did, I think, I don't think it was a scam. I think they really did try to study

working environments and what they did with the stimulus progression was they divided the workday into 15-minute increments and basically set a DJ playlist every 15 minutes and they assigned a stimulus value from one to six, one being really, really mellow, six being super up. And they basically went through, and almost like a Pandora sort of curated playlist

type of thing, to get people to work hard and efficiently throughout a day. And companies bought in, including the US Army. Yeah, I think World War II is basically cited as the moment when Muzak kind of proved itself enough at least to start being adopted by very large companies. And then within a few years after the war, by like the very early 50s, they started to spread more and more to even smaller and smaller companies. And it was this idea that if you played

Musac and Musac's patented stimulus progression model, you're going to avoid that mid-morning slump that every worker goes through in productivity. And then the mid-afternoon slump, you could avoid that too. And think about how many more widgets you could make if your employees don't, you know, slack off productivity-wise at 10 30 from 10 30 to lunch and then from like 2 30 until they go home. Like imagine if this this very pleasant music is just

kind of keeping them humming along what people call a forward, just unconscious sense of forward momentum. The tempo in your environment is moving subtly faster and faster. And so to keep people from going insane, part of the stimulus progression was that the songs in a 15 minute increment would kind of go up in tempo and then you'd have a 15 minute break of silence.

And then the music would come back on again. But then this 15 minutes, their first song, the tempo of their first song, would probably start a little faster than the tempo of the first song of the last 15 minutes. Right. And so all of a sudden, next thing, you know, you're making widgets like a maniac

because you're being manipulated by this stimulus progression model. At least, again, according to Muzak, which it's like a maniac because you're being manipulated by the stimulus progression model. At least again, according to Musack, I get what you're saying. It's not like Harvard came along and said, yes, we've studied this thoroughly and this is exactly what happens.

This is company claims, but it is intuitively sensible at least. Well, yeah. I mean, you need only to host a house party and play music yourself to determine how music can affect the mood of a group of people. You put on Grooves in the Heart and you know it's going to happen. Yeah, everybody's going to shake their groove thing. Everyone's going to shake their group thing. If you put in old Sourpuss, Brian Eno's music for airports,

not a good party thing. No, it's not. And since you brought him up for the second time, I say we discuss Brian Eno momentarily. Sure. I mean, I love that record and I love a lot of his stuff, including his ambient music experimental records. I think it's really, really good stuff to have on if it's a nice gray day outside and

you're getting work done. I really enjoyed his background music, but it's definitely not up in any way. You know what I found is a really good one for what you just described? You ever listen to Future Sound of London? No. They have an album, like a double album called Life Forms, and it's about as amazing as Ambient gets, so you should check that one out. Emily got me into Ambient, I call her Emily when she's listening to that stuff.

She really got me, she called it Amb groove. She really got me into that stuff over the years. Is that like, um, Like zero seven and, uh, you know, stuff that's, she calls it ambient groovy, just sort of, sort of mellow and groovy and like zero seven and more Chiba. And there was a certain era, I think, where that stuff peaked, massive attack a little bit. Oh yeah. It's good stuff.

Yeah, I think you'd like Lifeforms then. Future Sound of London's stuff is normally a little more, you know, super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also fairly dancey. Lifeforms is probably their most ambient stuff around. So Eno though, let's get back to him. He kind of came up with this as an antidote to music, right? Yes. If you like ambient music, you better thank your lucky stars for music,

because were it not for music, you might not have ambient music, at least not now. Maybe it would be coming 50 years from now, who knows? Yeah, he said, I love that in this article, it says, as reported by Red Bull Music. Right. Eno said this, and this was I think for the liner notes actually to airport, or Music for Airports.

Whereas canned music's intention is to brighten the environment by adding stimulus to it, ambient music is intended to induce calm and space, and a space to think. Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting. So he hits on something though that people would come to really resent about Musac is not even just necessarily the

syrup-iness of the music itself, but the intent behind the music, that it was always intended to basically manipulate your mood into making you a better worker, a more docile consumer. It was poking at your brain to get you to do things that you may or may not want to do. Maybe you will be less likely to punch some guy on the bus because there's music playing, which is a good thing. We should not be punching some guy on the bus because there's Musac playing, which is a good thing. We should not be punching other people on the bus.

But the point is, is you're being mind controlled in a certain way. And eventually people got kind of resentful of that. Yeah, no, that's true. We're not there yet though. We're not there yet though. There was actually a point in time though, Chuck, where Musac and popular music were

basically one and the same. Yeah, that was sort of, I mean, one of the heydays of music certainly was in that when Glenn, the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on the radio, music wasn't a far stretch from some of that stuff. So it was sort of all one in the same. I think it was as that, as styles changed and the 60s and 70s start rolling along that music became really sort of a bad word

to a lot of people. Right. And one of the reasons I saw that really explained it to me because, you know, things change, society just changed between the 1950s and the 1960s. It just abruptly changed. But that doesn't fully explain why Muzak just was suddenly looked down upon.

A good explanation I saw is that lyrics became really, really important in the late 60s. People had something to say, and Muzak does not include lyrics. It completely undermines the point of music if you put lyrics in or don't rearrange the lyrics with strings. So music couldn't keep up with that. It's not like it went away,

it doubled down, it kept doing what it was doing. In fact, it would take some of those pop hits that had really monumentally important lyrics and just take the lyrics out and replace it with a saxophone or something like that. Yeah, they didn't have to do that. I think it's interesting. They could have had a really mellow singer at a certain point come in, and I really respect the fact that they were like, nope, the singer is a violin, and I don't want to hear it anymore.

Right, but a lot of these songwriters in particular, like I think Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Boz Skaggs, all of them refused to let their music be covered by Musac or any of its competitors. But Paul Simon I saw said he always knew he had a hit when he heard a Musac version of it, like at the mall or something like that. Which it's kind of like Weird Al covering Nirvana.

Like Cobain said that he knew that Nirvana had made it when Weird Al covered Smells Like Teen Spirit. I think it's basically the same thing. Oh, I think most musicians, unless you're a Ted Nugent who, and we'll get to that, but very famously sort of offered to buy a Muzak when they fell upon hard times so he could basically burn it to the ground. I think most musicians deep down think it's kind of an honor

when one of their songs is Muzakified. It's got, yeah, you'd have to. Plus I just want to find out what somebody's gonna do with it. Cause like I was saying at the beginning, it really takes some creativity to come up with, okay, what can I replace this with? That's not just completely predictable or boring, but also isn't gonna grab everybody's attention.

Cause that's again, not the point of Musac. It's one of the, I don't know if it was a slogan of the Musac Corporation or not, but they basically said that they fill in the awkward pauses in life. It's like you were saying at the party, if you're at a party that doesn't have any music on you just probably just get smashed out of your skull because you're just trying to lubricate the social situation so much. Whereas if you put on music, it's like it takes a lot of that edge off.

That was one of the points too with Musac. And then also to kind of get you to linger a little longer when you were shopping in a store. That was part of it as well. Yeah, I mean music, we almost always have music on in our house unless it's night and we're watching a movie or watching something on TV.

But at almost all waking hours, we have music playing in our home and it just feels weird and quiet and not full of life when there's no music happening. Right. It's strange. It can be strange for sure. Should we take a break?

Yeah, we've reached basically the early 70s, which is Musac's first crisis point. And we'll come back to that after this. All right. So I'm born in 1971 and Muzak starts to die a little bit. A little bit. Because a real rock and roller came into the world. That's right. Born with a jean jacket with the Van Halen logo on marker in the back.

It did not go away completely though. It was just sort of, I guess the beginning of the end, but that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model for Musac, because Musac was never about its popularity. No, but there was a time where it was popular, like JFK had it on Air Force One, Eisenhower had it piped into the White House. It was playing on board Apollo 11.

Like it was everywhere. Like it's really hard to get across how ubiquitous it was, but I found a quote from a guy named Professor Gary Gumpert of Queens College in New York. He said that at the time, Muzak was just kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never startles us, it is never too loud, it's never too silent, it's always there.

And that was what it was like. You were just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field to the next, going from mall to mall, store to store, elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride, it was just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea that it's absolutely everywhere, unquestioned, yeah, it really kind of started to take a bit of a downturn in the 70s, but it just didn't go anywhere yet. It took decades for it to really take a hit. Yeah, I mean, even in the 80s, that was syndicated in 19 countries, there were 80 million people listening whether or

not they wanted to or not, listening to Muzak every day. Yeah. And the company ended up being bought and sold a couple of times over the years. I think in 81, or in 72, a company called Teleprompter owned it. Yeah. In 81, Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know if I believe this, the story goes that Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know if I believe this, the story goes that Westinghouse learned later on when they were buying Teleprompter that they owned Muzak and apparently they didn't know that.

That's what fundinguniverse.com says. I don't know. I mean, who doesn't? Maybe back then they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations. They were on a lot of scotch at the time, man. Although we've had companies that bought websites and then they learned that there was a podcast program attached. They're like, oh, I think I've heard of that, things you should do or something like that. Yeah, that was actually, that could happen

now that I think about it. That's right. Yeah, I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity for Muzak when I learned how many times they've been passed around corporation by corporation. And then I think in the, I think it was, when did Yesco come along? Was that the 90s?

So Yesco was around from the 60s. Well, when they finally came together though, right? Yeah, but they were early competitor, I guess a kind of a midlife competitor to Musac. But by the 80s, Yesco had established a name for itself by doing basically the opposite of what Musac did. Rather than making, you know,

covers of canned music without lyrics, they would just go get the licenses of like the hot new song of the moment and play those. And so rather than background music, which is what Musax Whole Jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music. And they were just this small little outfit from Seattle that, you know, it was kind of like the little engine

that could, and they changed the entire landscape, the audio landscape of the United States just by being persistent, by getting that word out that, hey, now foreground's the way to go, not background, that's old stuff. Yeah, and I think that's why today, when you go into Publix to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher Cross singing Sailing

instead of the music version of sailing. Yeah. Can't we just get both, though? Sure. Do we have to choose? I mean, I'm a big Christopher Cross fan. You're not going to find a bigger fan than me. For real? You like him that much? Yeah, he's great. I got two of his two big albums I still have on my shelf.

Oh, yeah? Well, he's sitting in the other room at my house right now. Well I guess you're the bigger fan. Yeah. You're like, no, no, no, he's just tied up. Right, I was gonna say, he's not here on his will, under his own will. In fact, you could make a pretty strong case

he's here against his will, but. So in 1984 though, is when Yesco got officially involved with Muzak. I think Muzak was, did they actually file for bankruptcy or were they just at that sort of precipice? Not yet. They were teetering right there on the edge and it was actually, they were bought by the Fields Company, the company that owns Marshall Field. So Chicago makes another appearance.

And the Fields company said, we like where this Yesco group is going, we're going to merge with them. So Musac actually merged with Yesco, the smaller company, but then ended up moving to Seattle, right before the grunge movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before Grunge was Musac basically. Yeah. I remember seeing that logo. I mean you've probably seen the vans around before

and really not known. It's that M with the circle around it. Right. I remember when I first saw that I was like, wait a minute, is that the Musac? Yeah, and that was a big update. They apparently went with some design group, I can't remember the name of it that just completely reinvented the brand. Because they went from being in the background to manipulating your mood using stimulus progression to this other thing, this new made up sounding thing called, what's it called? Quantum? Physics, mechanics, suicide. Keep guessing, what's it called? Quantum? Physics, mechanics, suicide.

No, keep guessing. What else? Uh, realm, leap. No. Those are all the quantums I know. There's gotta be another one, Chuck, cause I'm still looking. I'm so sorry. What the heck is that thing called? It's quantum leap.

We'll just call it quantum leap, sure. Okay. So, with this quantum leap. We'll just call it quantum leap, sure. Okay. So, with this quantum leap thing that they had going on... The Baccala effect. Quantum modulation. The Baccala effect. Quantum modulation, okay? Oh, okay.

I like Baccala effect. That's a great one. With quantum modulation, it was... We are evoking an emotion that is now tied forever to the brand that you're shopping, who store your shopping in right now. So like this one, so they hire people who make playlists, who curate these playlists that are start to finish.

They all share this one theme. They all kind of have this one like cool, not scary, super hip, beachy, you know, spring break 2008 kind of thing. Whatever. The best. So like a company will say, this is what our brand is all about. Give us playlists that fit this.

And so now you're kind of like, you feel cool because of the music of where you're shopping. And so that makes you want to shop and associate yourself with that place even more. That's what Musac, that's what's called Neo Musac is all about. That's the current state of affairs in the industry. Yeah, like take, if you want to use Armani Exchange as an example, what they'll do is

they will literally try and make like a DJ mix with, that has beat matches and it doesn't break the momentum and it's all crossfaded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls them up, they don't want to crossfade. They want Celine Dion songs and then a little bit of a small break and then a Sting song coming on. And these gentle fades in and fades out. And, you know, it's the same sort of stuff as just curated foreground music. What I love about music is in the end, when they were finally acquired, they had 1.5 million

commercially recorded songs in their catalog. And they call that The Well. That's amazing. Almost 800 Beatles songs. It is. I think that's why they never fully went under, is that catalog kept them commercially viable for sale. Super valuable. It's got to be. Yeah. So they were bought in I think 2009 maybe by a group called Mood Music in Austin. 2011.

And then two years later, they retired the Musack name forever. Just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's Mood Music is the company that owns the well, but they're doing that whole foreground music, quantum modulation type thing where, you just associate a brand with a certain kind of music. Like you wouldn't walk into that Armani Exchange

and hear Paul Simon. Yeah, Christopher Cross, you'd be like, something's off here. What is it, Mood Media? Their job is to make sure that there's nothing off while you're in that store, that it all just kind of fits together and you feel good about where you're shopping.

I don't know though, man. You want to move some Armani gear, put on You Can Call Me Al. Just watch it fly off the shelves. Man, those kids would freak out. Their frosted tips would stand up on end. They're like, what is this? This is amazing.

I've never felt more alive. Why is Chevy Jason here? A really cool thing though, is what you were talking about with Musac being on the tech forefront. It's really cool that over the years, they were always early adopters of tech. And it's funny to think about them that way, but they were always on the leading edge and the forefront of what technology was doing.

Yeah, so they, I don't know if they invented them, but they certainly were early adopters, if not pioneers, in vinyl records. People were not using vinyl at the time. Then they eventually ditched the vinyl records in favor of an electronic brain called Mader, M, the number eight, and the letter R, which basically was a big deck of reel-to-reel tapes. They had a bunch of different songs on it,

but they had different inaudible pulses that would trigger a different one to come on next. So you could curate lists on these huge reel-to-reels. It was just amazing. They were using this thing starting in the 50s. So the whole thing became kind of automated. They launched their own satellite in the 70s. They had a computer database in the 70s. Like they were very much pioneers and early adopters

of a lot of different technology that we take for granted today. Yeah, I mean, you could make an argument that they were doing the Pandora Spotify thing decades before they were doing it. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the whole point of it, too, is virtually unchanged. I mean, it's not necessarily to make you a docile shopper anymore, but it's to, like, they're trying to make you a docile shopper anymore, but it's to, like, they're trying to make you feel like that brand is part of your identity by evoking memories in you

using songs to unlock them. Totally. Pretty interesting stuff, man. I'm going to go, what were those two records again? I'm going to write this down. Okay, one is More Than Music Period and Environment, 1981 music record that has not just sailing on it, has Olivia Newton-John's magic. It has take your time, do it right.

Which I don't care if the lyrics are there or not. If you're sitting next to your mom in a doctor's office and baby, you can do it, take your time, do it right comes on. You both know what that song's about, you can do it, take your time, do it right comes on. You both know what that song's about. It may even be more uncomfortable in that situation. And then it ends with Funky Town. Nice.

It's a good one. The other one is called The Blue Album. It's a complete stimulus progression album and it has a bunch of good songs on it, including Orlean's Dance With Me, which is, if you ask me, the music covers way better than the original. So not to be confused with Weezer's Blue Album. No, it's a little different.

And then if you're like, oh, this music's floating my boat, go start looking up Ronnie Aldrich, Frank Chexfield, Montevani, and just start there. Yeah, and if eventually you're like, I'm feeling really goosey, how about some actual vocalists going on? And then you'll just go right into Josh's other favorite, which is Yacht Rock, easy listening.

I like Yacht Rock a lot too. I'm super right now into West Coast cool jazz. Stan Getz, Chet Baker. Oh, I can't remember his name, but I just got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from that era. Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio. Oh, I love Bill Evans. You're just getting into Bill Evans?

Yeah, I just started getting into him. I started with Chet Baker and just started working my way out. Vince Guaraldi is another great one. I know he's known for the Charlie Brown stuff, but all of Vince Guaraldi is great. Yeah, he is. You can tell just by the Charlie Brown album that he's an amazing jazz guy. Yeah, good stuff. So, Chuck, I have one more thing. There is, you know, people hate music a lot.

So there's some artists who have, like, tried to, a lot of artists have tried to make hay out of the whole thing. But one guy, David Schaeffer, had something from back in 2000 or 2002 something. He had X10R.1 and X10R.2. These two CDs that he released, they were basically his weird, unnerving remixes of music

that just turns the whole thing on its head so much so that like you may laugh out loud when you first hear them. And I believe they're on his website, but it's like a it's like music, but what you would hear in your nightmares. Okay, it's really good. And I believe he's got it on his website to go listen to. And I think you can buy the CDs too. So check that out. I'll check it out. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about music, just start listening and loving. Just don't prejudge. How about that?

Great. And since I said don't prejudge everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this from Lauren. Hey guys. A man walks down the street and says, why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. What a perfect email for this one.

I was reading my forearm tattoo by accident. Hey guys, been listening to stuff you should know for a few years. I often turn up the volume and play an episode while I cook dinner. My seven-year-old daughter, Lila, used to complain, uh, you're listening to this again? But I recently called her singing the beat to the intro music and she'll casually mention things she's heard from time to time. I suspect she's fond of the animal episodes. Anyway, you'll jokingly sometimes say, Jerry, you're going to have to edit that part out. It has me curious how often things are cut from an episode and why.

Bad jokes? Too long? Have you ever had to completely redo one? I think it'd be really interesting to know and I bet Lila would find it encouraging. Since she likes to make videos of herself singing and dancing, for the record, you all make it seem effortless and it's always a joy to listen to. That is Lauren from Montevallo, Alabama. And she says, PS.

I'll bet that's not how you say that. Montevallo, yeah, you're probably right. You put a little too much mustard on there. She says, PS, how cool of a mom would I be if my daughter heard our names on the podcast. Yeah, cool mom. So there you go, Lauren and Lila. The answer is very little gets edited out.

Just the singing and dancing. Like that siren in the background? We'll probably just leave that in to prove a point. No, we don't edit a lot out. Occasionally, like we found out, and we said this before early on, we left in the word stumbles and the ums and the uhs, and just because it's a conversation

and we didn't want to make it seem too scripted because it's not, or canned because it's a conversation, we didn't want to make it seem too scripted or canned because it's not. And so we just left that stuff in there. I think today you had to look something up real quick, but that didn't happen much. Yeah, I had to poke my head out of the studio and look at my record collection to come up with Bill Evans' name. if we really edit out. Nugent of podcasting. That's right, man. That guy's always wearing like a studded leather wristband and stuff. I keep waiting on Roman to text me and being like, you guys are consistently talking smack about me.

He doesn't listen and no one he knows listens. Oh, that's impossible. So who is that? Lila and Lauren. Correct. Nice. Well, thank you very much for writing in. Hope we answered your question.

And if you want to get in touch with us like Lila and Lauren did, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit theHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.