Daily Meh is an edited stream of consciousness, by Simen.

The Day the Muzak Died

Muzak, the company, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. The company has an impressive record of pseudoscientific marketing, from “Stimulus Progression” — the idea that workers would become happier and more productive if Muzak’s special special selections of songs played at fifteen minute intervals on/off in the background — to today’s “sensory branding”.

The New Yorker ran a long article a few years back about the company. It ends with the following quote from a member of Muzak’s marketing department: “Our biggest competitor is silence.” Regardless of Muzak’s fate, silence in the public space has been all but eradicated.