We like music, you like music, let's be friends.
The Rise & Fall of Muzak
by RJ Rodriguez-Lewis posted January 30, 2007
Founded in 1934, Muzak Holdings, LLC, is best known for distributing appropriated music to retail establishments and other related companies.
You mean to tell me that the crap streaming through malls across America is played on purpose?
I had no idea.
Music is everywhere. Music is the active art. In the digital generation, music is undeniably embedded in our cultural DNA. It's a part of our identity. Music has undeniably been more than music since its creation. It's a reason to dance, it's a reason to sing, it's a reason to praise, to laugh, to cry, to reflect. On our televisions, in our shops, in our churches, over our telephones (while the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power operator has you on hold), music is an integral part of our societal infrastructure and will serve as template from which future generations judge times past.
Living in the sophisticated world of inflated artistic production, a place where anyone from anywhere can D.I.Y. their way to the top of the pops, "muzak" had become a numbed euphemism to describe music not worth listening to; a simple syntactical trick to display a watered-down version of an otherwise triumphant original. Not life-changing "music" but its melted-down, less-convincing counterpart, "muzak."
Like carpet on the floor, curtains on a window, or paintings on a wall, "muzak" is used as an appliance to determine the mood a particular setting, whatever it may be. As a marketing tool, the instrumental covering of popular songs has been used to influence shoppers, in some subconscious way, to keep shopping. For many years, Muzak held a virtual monopoly in the background music field for international business. This past year, and for the past eleven consecutive years, it seems that Muzak's monopoly is crumbling. The corporation lost over $9 million in 2006 alone and is consistently failing to turn a profit.
Is the failure of Muzak an alarming indicator that our artistic output does not need to be appropriated for non-musical promotion anymore? Has the formulation of stable music markets produced nothing but flummox in creativity? Is today's musical production serving nothing but capitalistic greed, feeding businesses like Muzak but starving artistic communities? For example, is the appearance of our favorite tunes on televised commercials a sign of masterful marketing or musical-creative failure?
The recent release of Nina Simone's work polished by latter-day admirers provides a well-suited case study. As a body of work marketed as an artistic triumph "untouched" by a large corporate association, and supposedly enhanced by artistically-legitimate individuals, it merely fails, and might as well plummet to a grain of sand in the lonely beaches of a Muzak catalog.
As a massively influential figure of the 20th century, Nina Simone was most known for her theatrical stage persona and unclassifiable brand of musical sass. Fueled by the prestigious education she received from Juilliard in the 50's and the civil unrest of American politics in the 60's, Simone was respected almost religiously, often referred to as the "High Priestess of Soul." As an arranger and composer, jazz singer, pianist, and protest singer, Simone used her musical abilities to vocalize socio-political remonstration.
Producer Scott Schlachter collaborated with RCA and Legacy Recordings to release Remixed & Re-Imagined, a collection including the most club-feisty selections from Simone's RCA Records period. Simone's fiery chic ignited an influential spark in the budding east coast post-disco underground at the end of the 70's and beginning of the 80's. It was the thriving gay and multi-ethnic minority that most closely welcomed Simone's musical messages and fed the potential of an international dance music revolution. Remixed & Re-Imagined supposedly includes the work of some of the industry's most acclaimed producers such as Francóis K., Tony Humphries, Mocean Worker, Coldcut, Nickodemus, Grovefinder, Madison Park & Lenny B., Chris Coco, DJ Logic, and Organica.
What a shame. What a sham. It's tremendously cliché. A big, bad record company corners some of the dance world's royalty and lures them to operate a musical facelift on some vintage tracks of a soul heavy-hitter like Nina Simone. Remixed & Re-Imagined is simply a sickly-shiny version of Nina's spirit heavily disguised in unimaginative, commercially-cleansed production tricks. The modernity of studio technology masks what made Simone special in the first place-her revolutionary, raw form of expression.
Since Simone's passing (it has been a few years now), this type of production makes me question RCA's intentions. I'm not so sure Simone would have been satisfied with this type of rampant butchery. The contour of today's music market is arguably predictable, and I'm not so sure who RCA is reaching out to. The club kids who paraded the dance floors in the 70's and 80's are likely too senile to purchase albums anymore, and less likely to spend their pocket change on "muzak" versions of their favorite protest-diva-a completely contradictory image. From "I Can't See Nobody" to "Obeah Woman," it seems that the effort contributed to "remix" and "re-imagine" these Simone pieces was cheap and miniscule, like slapping a Prada label on a pleather purse.
The stability of music markets has established predictable patterns, including loyal subcultures of consumers, making it easier for promotional excursions and lucrative business plans. The explosive rise of "indie-chic" in the last five years goes to show that independent creativity cannot hide from international market-sculpting. In a world of immediate satisfaction and massively common musical production, it seems that musical efforts have no future unless they have a commercial future. Consequently, more music fits an unsatisfying, formulaic mold more often than excitingly breaking it. Has our technologically progressive culture and capitalistic success cursed our musical creativity and made us imaginatively lazy?
In addition, musical accessibility, through the success of global capitalism, has grown so incredibly easy that music has lost its value. There is simply too much music. As a result, this inflation has produced a culture of hopeless snobs, completely aware of all the marketable patterns and unfazed by them. Despite their recent money-related malfunction, businesses like Muzak Holdings, LLC, have effectively lowered artistic standards by instrumentally "dumbing-down" tunes that were sometimes not worth listening to anyway. The capitalistic mentality is so strongly embedded in our culture, that even when we attempt to pay tribute to an artistic icon like Nina Simone, nothing but "muzak" comes out.
You mean to tell me that the crap streaming through malls across America is played on purpose?
I had no idea.
Music is everywhere. Music is the active art. In the digital generation, music is undeniably embedded in our cultural DNA. It's a part of our identity. Music has undeniably been more than music since its creation. It's a reason to dance, it's a reason to sing, it's a reason to praise, to laugh, to cry, to reflect. On our televisions, in our shops, in our churches, over our telephones (while the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power operator has you on hold), music is an integral part of our societal infrastructure and will serve as template from which future generations judge times past.
Living in the sophisticated world of inflated artistic production, a place where anyone from anywhere can D.I.Y. their way to the top of the pops, "muzak" had become a numbed euphemism to describe music not worth listening to; a simple syntactical trick to display a watered-down version of an otherwise triumphant original. Not life-changing "music" but its melted-down, less-convincing counterpart, "muzak."
Like carpet on the floor, curtains on a window, or paintings on a wall, "muzak" is used as an appliance to determine the mood a particular setting, whatever it may be. As a marketing tool, the instrumental covering of popular songs has been used to influence shoppers, in some subconscious way, to keep shopping. For many years, Muzak held a virtual monopoly in the background music field for international business. This past year, and for the past eleven consecutive years, it seems that Muzak's monopoly is crumbling. The corporation lost over $9 million in 2006 alone and is consistently failing to turn a profit.
Is the failure of Muzak an alarming indicator that our artistic output does not need to be appropriated for non-musical promotion anymore? Has the formulation of stable music markets produced nothing but flummox in creativity? Is today's musical production serving nothing but capitalistic greed, feeding businesses like Muzak but starving artistic communities? For example, is the appearance of our favorite tunes on televised commercials a sign of masterful marketing or musical-creative failure?
The recent release of Nina Simone's work polished by latter-day admirers provides a well-suited case study. As a body of work marketed as an artistic triumph "untouched" by a large corporate association, and supposedly enhanced by artistically-legitimate individuals, it merely fails, and might as well plummet to a grain of sand in the lonely beaches of a Muzak catalog.
As a massively influential figure of the 20th century, Nina Simone was most known for her theatrical stage persona and unclassifiable brand of musical sass. Fueled by the prestigious education she received from Juilliard in the 50's and the civil unrest of American politics in the 60's, Simone was respected almost religiously, often referred to as the "High Priestess of Soul." As an arranger and composer, jazz singer, pianist, and protest singer, Simone used her musical abilities to vocalize socio-political remonstration.
Producer Scott Schlachter collaborated with RCA and Legacy Recordings to release Remixed & Re-Imagined, a collection including the most club-feisty selections from Simone's RCA Records period. Simone's fiery chic ignited an influential spark in the budding east coast post-disco underground at the end of the 70's and beginning of the 80's. It was the thriving gay and multi-ethnic minority that most closely welcomed Simone's musical messages and fed the potential of an international dance music revolution. Remixed & Re-Imagined supposedly includes the work of some of the industry's most acclaimed producers such as Francóis K., Tony Humphries, Mocean Worker, Coldcut, Nickodemus, Grovefinder, Madison Park & Lenny B., Chris Coco, DJ Logic, and Organica.
What a shame. What a sham. It's tremendously cliché. A big, bad record company corners some of the dance world's royalty and lures them to operate a musical facelift on some vintage tracks of a soul heavy-hitter like Nina Simone. Remixed & Re-Imagined is simply a sickly-shiny version of Nina's spirit heavily disguised in unimaginative, commercially-cleansed production tricks. The modernity of studio technology masks what made Simone special in the first place-her revolutionary, raw form of expression.
Since Simone's passing (it has been a few years now), this type of production makes me question RCA's intentions. I'm not so sure Simone would have been satisfied with this type of rampant butchery. The contour of today's music market is arguably predictable, and I'm not so sure who RCA is reaching out to. The club kids who paraded the dance floors in the 70's and 80's are likely too senile to purchase albums anymore, and less likely to spend their pocket change on "muzak" versions of their favorite protest-diva-a completely contradictory image. From "I Can't See Nobody" to "Obeah Woman," it seems that the effort contributed to "remix" and "re-imagine" these Simone pieces was cheap and miniscule, like slapping a Prada label on a pleather purse.
The stability of music markets has established predictable patterns, including loyal subcultures of consumers, making it easier for promotional excursions and lucrative business plans. The explosive rise of "indie-chic" in the last five years goes to show that independent creativity cannot hide from international market-sculpting. In a world of immediate satisfaction and massively common musical production, it seems that musical efforts have no future unless they have a commercial future. Consequently, more music fits an unsatisfying, formulaic mold more often than excitingly breaking it. Has our technologically progressive culture and capitalistic success cursed our musical creativity and made us imaginatively lazy?
In addition, musical accessibility, through the success of global capitalism, has grown so incredibly easy that music has lost its value. There is simply too much music. As a result, this inflation has produced a culture of hopeless snobs, completely aware of all the marketable patterns and unfazed by them. Despite their recent money-related malfunction, businesses like Muzak Holdings, LLC, have effectively lowered artistic standards by instrumentally "dumbing-down" tunes that were sometimes not worth listening to anyway. The capitalistic mentality is so strongly embedded in our culture, that even when we attempt to pay tribute to an artistic icon like Nina Simone, nothing but "muzak" comes out.