Like it or not, that horrid "elevator music" that all musician profess to abhor is closer to the mainstream of "what's desired in music" than anyone likes to think.
We are too close to the problem to truly appreciate it, and as we buy comparatively little music ourselves, our tastes (or, our "current playlist", as the New York (NY) Times loves to put in their lifestyle interviews of endless numbers of anonymous (to me, at least) celebrities) do not count for that much in the grand world of marketing. Thus, while we may be much more expert in the making of music, the music that we make (even the best of it) has a limited appeal.
I love to use the music that everyone says that they hate, disco, as the example here. It is quite fashionable to diss the sequin and Spandex crowd these days, and even the word "disco" is a source of instant humor when employed in the right setting. But, some of the most popular stuff that we play comes from our ample collection of disco tunes. At weddings and benefits, there's nothing guaranteed to fill up the dance floor like the opening notes of I Will Survive or Last Dance. And, if you pay attention, the sports highlights on television are usually accompanied by the same four to the bar, gallop tempo disco beats (although the songs are usually anonymous).
"Easy listening" or whatever you wish to call it is another category that gets a lot of grief from musicians in particular, totally ignoring the fact that it's providing employment for some of our not so catholic (in the small "C" sense of the word) brethren. While it may not be the most challenging of what is done, it is melodic and it does seem to please a large number of people. As music is a big tent (unlike the Republican Party of today), they can occupy their corner of it without threatening me, just like the rockers and the others.
"Elevator music" may also come in for some mockery, but for even less reason than the two categories above. Remember, said elevator music is being piped into locations that are not normally thought of as "entertainment venues". Somebody thinks that it's a pretty good idea to provide gratuitous entertainment where none would seem to be necessary, and (the research shows) they are quite correct in doing so.
Musak (yes, there actually is such a company) is a music giant that few even know of. They research, arrange, perform and distribute a number of "private" music channels, to which savvy users subscribe for a variety of reasons. Some are similar to normal music performance uses (a bar that wants quiet background without commercials or station identification, and without worrying about the seat tax), and others are anything but.
We have all heard of shopping malls that pipe in classical stuff to deter the presence of loitering teens. Musak does this sort of thing and much more. I worked for the then-Veterans Administration back in the 1970's, and was part of a committee to increase productivity of the administrative staff at our Regional Office at that time. One of the ideas floated was to allow individuals to bring in their radios to entertain them while they worked.
That didn't work, as everyone wanted something different. Instead, the agency next tried Musak, paying for one of their "upbeat" channels out of a fund provided for "employee moral" and piping through the already in-place speaker system. That worked, and worked in spades. People stopped chatting with others, as the Mantovanni stuff that was provided tended to keep people quiet and occupied with work. And the music cycled on and off (I think that it was 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off, but I could be mistaken at this remove), so it never really got to the point where it was omnipresent. Overall the office showed a mid-teens improvement in productivity by the time that I left.
(Of course, some could argue that my departure was the cause of the increase...)
Musak devours music at a tremendous pace, and the company's contractors are constantly trying to add to the mix. And, they pull tunes in from all sources, some of them pretty unlikely.
I will never forget the day when I was riding an elevator in a high rise Federal building up in Chicago, when out of the speaker issued the obscure Sondheim tune Love Is Going Around. This was the original "signature tune" of the musical A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, but had been demoted during the opening in New Haven (or wherever), to be replaced by the epic Comedy Tonight! by which the show is today known.
Love Is Going Around did not go back into the trunk, however. Instead, it has been demoted to incidental music underneath the post-entracte narrative that brings the audience up to date on the plot. No words, of course, and played no louder than mp. And, there it slumbered for fifty-plus years or so, un-noticed by anyone other than the clarinet players who carried the melody line (it is catchy enough, in a pleasant sort of way) and me in that elevator.
I have a friend from my high school days, a dynamite bass clarinet player (better than me, even, he says modestly) who ended up as a contractor for Musak. He once told me that they ran an arrangement once, did a little touchup on parts that needed some work, and then put it in the can in one take. Doing this over an eight hour day may not be as glamorous as playing a gig in a first class venue, but he said it did pay the bills quite nicely...
