The Unheard Influence of Background Music

An STS Research Paper presented to the faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia

by

Scott Lebow

March 21, 2016

On my honor as a University student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments.

Signed: ______

Approved: ______Date ______Peter Norton, Department of Engineering and Society

Background music has a profound effect on its listeners. It can change individuals’ perception of their environment, their emotional state and their behavior. Technical innovations in background music can induce large cultural changes and extend its reach.

Innovators who understand these effects and how music technology, background music and the listener are related can take them into accounts.

Background music is useful in marketing (Anderson, 2015) in workplace management (Burris-Meyer, 1943), and in commercial accommodations such as in hotels and restaurants (Anderson, 2015).

Music has been recorded for just 139 years (Kramer, 1997) of its history of at least 40,000 years (Barras, 2014). Since then, recording and broadcast innovations have been frequent. This history offers lessons in how such innovations influence individuals and groups.

Innovations’ effects can be hard to predict. The Sony Walkman TPS-L2, for example, was intended let two listeners share music (Morita, 1986) but it was primarily used individually (Schönhammer, 1989). Innovators who understand such effects can develop more effective designs (Hosokawa, 1984). “Piped music” or muzak was once the dominant form of background music but now competes with online streaming

(Anderson, 2015). Vaporwave shows that innovations originally anti-commercialization can later be commercialized (Nguyen, 2015).

Literature Review

Researchers have studied how background music affects listeners. Antrim (1943) showed that background music can increase productivity. Burris-Meyer (1943) documented such effects on factory workers. Jucan and Simion (2014) found that

1 background music in the classroom can benefit a child’s emotional, educational and social development. Medvedev (2015) found that background music can aid in physiological recovery. Morris (1998), however, found that in advertising, background music had mixed results in changing listener’s emotions. Oldham (1995) found that personal stereo headsets can influence listeners more than speaker systems. Shih (2011) found that different types of background music can influence listeners differently.

Some unscientific findings are useful. Eno (1978; 1986) studied background music through his ambient music work. Roquet (2009) analyzed the artistic background music of Brian Eno and Tetsuo Inoue. Anderson (2015) and Vanderbilt (2014) wrote about music and mood.

Music technology history accounts for much of the evolution of background music. Barras (2014) wrote about early humans and music. In “Before the Phonograph”

(1890), the New York Times considered the impact of the phonograph. Frazer (1983) wrote about the audio technology used in early 1980s urban Japan. For Time magazine,

Haire (2009) wrote a history of the Sony Walkman. Hosokawa (1984) wrote about the cultural friction caused the Sony Walkman; Jarman and Jarman (2005), The Verge (n.d.) and Kim (2014) examined its design. Kramer (1997) considered how music technology expands artistic possibilities. Lanza (1994) offered a historical analysis of background music. Levy (1966) filed a patent for music on hold for telephone calls which was explained by Vanderbilt (2014). Morita (1986) and Sony Corporation (1996) discussed the history of Sony Corporation, known for audio technology. Morton (2016) wrote a history of sound recording. Schoenherr (2005) wrote a history of recording technology for the Audio Engineering Society. Schönhammer (1989) studied the cultural effect of

2 the Walkman. Anderson (2015) studied the relationship between muzak and streaming services. Davis (2015) provided a database of K-mart background music from the 1970s to 1990s. Streaming services were described by Sisario (2013), Peoples (2015), and

Alexander (2015). The Empire State Building’s was described by Penafield (2006) and

Richman (2008). Its background music was described by Lanza (1994). Pearson (2015), wos Z (2015), Nguyen (2015), and Harper (2012) studied the history and impact of vaporwave.

The Individual Listener and Background Music

Listening to background music can profoundly affect listener perception of their surroundings, their emotional state and their behavior. This interaction has been observed by both scientists and artists.

Background music changes listeners’ perceptions of their environment. Musician Brian

Eno explored this effect in his ambient music (Roquet, 2009). In a 1986 interview

(Korner), Eno explained that background music can:

give us an instant sense of location. When I was traveling a lot, I used to carry four or five cassettes that I knew could reliably produce a certain condition for me. If I wanted to write letters, I'd put one particular cassette on, and that piece of music would make the letter-writing space for me. (Eno, 1986)

Eno attempted to instill a sense of place through ambient music. His 1978 album

Ambient 1: Music for Airports was designed to be a fixture in a Cologne airport terminal.

In the liner notes, Eno describes how his ambient music differs from other background music:

Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to

3 `brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. (Eno, 1978)

Yamasaki (2013) studied the relationship between listeners’ environment and background music. When the music’s properties contrasted with the environment, perception was more affected than when the music’s properties were in agreement with the environment. For example, when listening to active music in an inactive environment

(the researchers used a park and a residential area), listeners perceived more activation than if they were listening to no music (Yamasaki, 2013).

In a related experiment, Masakura and Ichikawa (2005) studied the effect of different types of noise at various volumes on the perception of the listener’s environment. They found that relaxing and well-known music caused listeners to perceive their environment more favorably, independent of noise type, as long as the music was audible.

Medvedev, Shepard and Hautus (2015), studied the impact of background music on physiological recovery. Soundscapes found “pleasant” by subjects promoted recovery. They suggested that a hospital could tailor the soundscapes of its wards to patients to aid recovery.

These studies all conclude that background music changes environmental perception in the listener. Eno’s work attempts to change the listener’s environment

(Eno, 1978). These findings all suggest that background music plays an important role in sense of place.

4 Researchers have studied the relationship between background music and behavior since

1922, with R. D. Smith’s “Sorting Mail to Music” (Smith, 1922; Oldham, 1995). In

1943, Burris-Meyer studied background music’s influence on factory production. He found that background music of any kind boots employees’ motivation and stamina

(Burris-Meyer, 1943), but noted that some music is more suited to a factory setting than others. “Deep in the Heart of Texas” led workers to clap, not work. Wyatt and Langdon

(1937) found a 6% to 11% increase in factory worker productivity (Wyatt, 1937). Music relieved the boredom of factory work, boosting productivity. One typical statement from

Wyatt and Langdon’s study was “It makes you work better because you talk less” (Wyatt,

1937).

Music can influence behavior outside of work too. In a 2014 study of Romanian classrooms, researchers Jucan and Simion found that background music can encourage children to network socially, and further apply themselves to learning. Shih (2011), however, found that background music with lyrics diminishes attention (Shih, 2011), but that instrumental music can improve morale and job satisfaction (Shih, 2011).

Background music can also affect emotions. Jucan and Simion (2014) found that background music in the classroom can stimulate children’s emotional development, improving their social and educational development. Anderson (2015) characterizes background music as “mood delivery systems,” noting that online streaming has made it ubiquitous. To Anderson: “Music obviously primes emotional states directed toward very distinct objects (whether lullabies whispered into a baby’s ear or loud anthems declaring love of God and country) as well as more diffuse psychic states with no

5 particular object in mind (ambiguous moods).” Morris (1998), however, studying how background music affects the emotional states of listeners, finds mixed results.

Music Technology and Cultural Shifts

Innovations in music technology extend music’s uses, changing its social role. In 1877,

Thomas Edison’s phonograph changed how listeners perceived audio (Kramer, 1997).

Edison saw the phonograph as a dictation tool for businessmen but it was quickly adopted as an entertainment source (Before, 1890). “Phonogram” enthusiasts collected recordings like a photographer collects images (Before, 1890). In 1890, the New York Times described the novelty of audio recording:

There is something peculiarly weird and attractive in the idea of calling up at will some old friend or famous character and listening to an exact reproduction of his or her voice. If the person is dead it is like resurrecting him from the grave, and many collectors of phonograms now possess records of this kind which are extremely valuable. (Before, 1890)

The phonograph would lead to the jukebox in 1889, when the Pacific Phonograph

Company set up the first coin-operated phonograph, which generated about $1000 in about five months at 5 cents per play, commercializing music recordings (Morton, 2016).

In 1909, the first recorded album was released (Schoenherr, 2005). In the mid-1920s, electrical systems improved recording fidelity (Schoenherr, 2005). According to Morton

(2016), records were more effective than radio broadcasts at spreading musical culture.

In the 1980s the personal portable stereo tape player changed musical values. The Sony

Walkman TPS-L2 (Haire, 2009) was released July 1, 1979, it was a 14-ounce, blue-and- silver cassette tape player with “chunky” buttons, headphones, and a leather case (Haire,

2009). It sported a microphone and dual earphone jacks (Haire, 2009). Users could

6 listen to their recordings anywhere, control playback and volume. Audio output was limited to headphones (Haire, 2009).

While the Walkman name is synonymous with the personal portable stereo, the first model, TPS-L2, is especially important because its design. There was fear that the product would not sell, so more care was taken by Sony in its design (Morita, 1986).

Later models could look to their predecessors for guidance.

The TPS-L2 was originally conceived for a single listener’s use, but its final design was for two listeners (Sony, 1996). Dual headphone jacks and a “hot line” button were intended to let headphone listening be a social experience. Testing a prototype of the TPS-L2 at home Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony, found listening to music on a headset was an alienating experience. “[M]y experiment was annoying my wife, who felt shut out. … I decided, we needed to make provision for two sets of headphones,”

(Morita, 1986).

With the “hot line” button users could hear the TPS-L2’s microphone input through headphones when depressed, without pausing the music (Kim, 2014). To Morita, it was a way to listen to music and converse with a friend (Morita, 1986). But the WM-

R2, released in 1982, was the last Walkman to feature “hot line” (Jarman, 2005).

The Walkman and other personal stereo devices became controversial soon after its release. According to Schönhammer (1989), many adults were “irritated” by Walkman users. Five years after the release of the TPS-L2, Japanese Professor Shuhei Hosokawa coined the term “Walkman Effect”: personal stereos allowed listeners shape their environment (Hosokawa, 1984). He coined the term “musica mobilis,” as a category of musical sound for music on a personal stereo: “I define musica mobilis as music whose

7 source voluntarily or involuntarily moves from one point to another, coordinated by the corporal transportation of the source owner(s)” (Hosokawa, 1984). According to

Hosokawa (1984), musica mobilis comprises “four successive and accumulative steps”: urban life in general, street musicians, machines emitting music outward, such as portable radios or car stereos, and walkman listeners, those “listening to music alone” (Hosokawa,

1984).

Urban Japan in the early 1980s fully embraced musica mobilis in the third step, from voice announcements on subways, to jackets that vibrated along with music

(Frazier, 1983). Hosokawa (1984) contends that while the personal stereo was only a

“minor” step from the “portable radio-cassette or car stereo,” it represented a large cultural change. Examining the design of the Walkman, Hosokawa (1984) explained the success by relating human action with design decisions:

Miniaturisation as double strategy – spatial and urban is deeply connected with another feature of the walkman, singularisation, for it enables our musical listening to be more occasional, more incidental, more contingent. Music can be taken wherever and whenever we go. (Hosokawa, 1984)

With the personal stereo, according to Hosokawa (1984), a listener creates a personal environment. He uses the metaphor of a “secret theatre” to describe the actor- network between the personal stereo, the listener and the non-listener (Hosokawa, 1984).

A non-listener observing the listener knows that there is a “theatre” but cannot experience it. According to Hosokawa (1984), this gives a listener an advantage over a non-listener, making the listener a “secret-holder” and the non-listener a “secret-beholder.” This imbalance is a source of irritation to the “secret-beholder” (Hosokawa, 1984).

8 The TPS-L2 was a massive commercial success (Haire, 2009). In the first two months of its release it sold over 50000 units, despite Sony’s expectation of 5000 units

(Haire, 2009). After 10 years, Sony had produced over 50 million units and the name

“Walkman” had become “virtually synonymous with ‘headphone stereo’ products”

(Sony, 2009).

The adoption of the Walkman shows a shift in the basic view of music listening.

Before the personal stereo, music listening was always a shared experience (Morita,

1986). After, sharing music listening was a decision.

The impact of the phonograph, Morita’s design decisions, and Hosokawa’s

“Walkman Effect” theory show how a new music technology can cause discord between user’s and non-user’s value of music. These examples can inform new music technology designs and minimize discord.

Background Music and Technology

Music technology and background music have changed together for almost 100 years.

Innovation sometimes allows for change in the use of background music with quick market adoption.

To many, commercial background music is synonymous with the company Muzak

(Lanza, 1994), founded in 1922 by signal communications expert and inventor Brigadier

General George Owen Squier (Lanza, 1994). Muzak’s goal was to transmit background music to homes and commercial spaces using Squier’s, then new, patents (Lanza, 1994).

According to Anderson (2015), muzak is widely used commercially as a way to create a “mood environment.” After years of cultural impact, Muzak, the company, was purchased in 2011 by Mood Media, “a leader in so-called sensory marketing,” for $345

9 million (Sisario, 2013). According to Mood Media, it reaches “150 million people each day at more than 500,000 locations around the world” using “a scientifically designed program to increase workers’ productivity and make shoppers more comfortable”

(Sisario, 2013).

The Empire State Building, a technological marvel (Penafiel, 2006), opened with background music being played in elevators, lobbies and observatories (Schoenherr,

2005). According to Lanza (1994), elevators in early skyscrapers were “perceived by many as floating domiciles of disequilibrium” and music was used “to give people at least some illusion of continuity amid the disorder.” When an Army B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945, engine parts “severed the lifting cables of two elevators on the 79th floor” (Richman, 2008). According to Lanza (1994), music in the building observatories helped calm onlookers and maintained “no panic.”

In 1966, Alfred Levy was granted patent for a “Telephone hold program system”

(Levy, 1966). According to Levy (1966), waiting on hold, without music, is “often disturbing or exasperating.” According to Vanderbilt (2014), music on hold is now prevalent; “'silent hold' is commercial death.”

Anderson (2015) contends that muzak is a “workplace tool,” providing curated

“audio architecture” for groups of listeners. Some retailers even created their own muzak, such as K-mart, combining easy-listening music and advertisements (Davis,

2015). According to Davis (2015), K-mart “stores built in the early 1970's … originally had Altec-Lansing amplifiers with high quality speakers throughout the store.”

Online music streaming services such as Songza, Spotify and Pandora compete by offering “user-guided mood elevation and enhancement” (Anderson, 2015). Anderson

10 (2015) calls these “neo-muzak,” traditional muzak’s influence is not decided by the user.

According to Peoples (2015), Pandora reported 10.6 billion streaming hours in the first half of 2015. Another service, Soundcloud, increased its streams by 192 million from

May to June 2015 (Peoples, 2015). Streaming services are available to a listener anywhere through phones, desktop applications, televisions, web browser, car stereos, and AV boxes (Alexander, 2015).

The vaporwave audio-visual aesthetic, a movement which began online around

2010 (wos X, 2015), represents a new commercialization of background music.

According to Pearson (2015), it is both a celebration and criticism of 21st century background music and, according to Harper (2012), by extension capitalism. According to wos X (2015), whose Youtube documentary is often referenced by fans of the genre, vaporwave uses “the redistribution of old eighties elevator music inspired from funk, new-age and smooth jazz.” He claims that vaporwave is the first truly globalized genre of music because it originated on, and is distributed through, the internet (wos X, 2015).

It uses eighties and nineties inspired sound, often sampling, to create ambient music (wos

X, 2015). According to Pearson (2015), a key aspect of vaporwave is “the distance that these aesthetics create between their source material and the works that eventually come from them.”

Ironically vaporwave is now used for commercial interests. MTV recently rebranded itself to a vaporwave inspired look (Nguyen, 2015). According to Nguyen

(2015), this is an attempt to “bring MTV back into relevance to a younger audience that’s cutting cords in droves.” According to Pearson (2015), social media website Tumblr,

11 where early vaporwave thrived, has also “co-opted” the aesthetic with “Tumblr TV,” “a web viewer for GIFs with an explicitly 90s MTV-style visual spin.”

These examples all stem from innovations, Muzak and music on hold with communications, and streaming and vaporwave with the internet. A new technology will provide the next step in background music innovation. Innovators that are aware of this can better design for background music applications.

Conclusion

Background music, music technology and the listener are interrelated. Technical innovations extend background music’s uses which affect the listener in new ways.

Study of such effects can make them more predictable. Researchers have studied relationships between pairs of the three elements discussed here, or have focused on a single technology. Innovators have sometimes misunderstood these relationships. For example, the Sony Walkman introduced as a portable home stereo for primarily shared listening. But Morita (1986) found that others felt alienated. If a new technology’s cultural impact can be predicted, the developer can make more informed design decisions. Future researchers could examine specific technologies and how their history fits the research presented here, and can consider similar relationships in music technology before 1877.

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