Muzak: It's For "Audio Branding"

Tonight, I read a great story on Muzak by David Owen in The New Yorker.

Among the things I learned:

• Muzak’s corporate headquarters are in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Naturally, there’s an awesome sound system, which extends into the parking lot but not (for deeply felt symbolic reasons) into the elevator.
• McKelvey, a creative manager at Muzak, is one of twenty-two “audio architects”—the company’s term for its program designers.
• In the forties, Muzak introduced a trademarked concept, called Stimulus Progression, which held that most workers would be more productive if they were exposed to music of gradually increasing intensity, in fifteen minute cycles.
• Audio architecture is a compelling concept because the human response to musical accompaniment is powerful and involuntary. “Our biggest competitor,” a member of Muzak’s marketing department told me, “is silence.”

Here's the temporary link.