Ongoing History Daily: On-hold music
If you’ve ever called any place of business or customer service centre, chances are that you’ve been placed on hold. And chances are you’ve been subjected to music that’s supposed to keep you occupied while you’re being ignored. Who came up with that idea?
The concept of “on-hold” music first appeared in a patent in the spring of 1962 called “Telephone Hold Program System,” a way of curing the deadly silence while you were waiting to talk to someone. The concept was simple: if music is still playing, then you are still connected. And the way it came about was rather interesting.
The inventor of on-hold music discovered that the phone system at his business accidentally picked up a local radio station so when customers were put on hold, they heard music. That was all he needed to come up with his invention.
LOL. As an IT guy who has worked with phone systems in the past, I’ve come across a lot of the greatest hits (aka the defaults). The RingCentral ones are pretty easy to look up, but you’ve probably heard their “Acoustic” a number of times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sck1OjpURYM
I think the most popular/requested (if there’s such a thing) is Cisco’s Opus #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pais41IW5dk
It’s a very low-key synth jam on a DX7 from 1989. There’s a great write up of its history here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/68163/ciscos-default-hold-music-was-written-16-year-old-computer-nerd
Finally another really popular series is stuff by Macroform, used on FreePBX/Asterisk systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnVdZuzpqDI