Before the emergence of the Internet, such music was often "piped" to businesses and homes[1] through telephone lines, private networks or targeted radio broadcasting (as in the BBC's Music While You Work, where powerful speakers were set up in factories to make the broadcast audible).
This type of music was produced, for instance, by the Mantovani Orchestra, and conductors such as Franck Pourcel and James Last, peaking in popularity around the 1970s.
[4] More recent types of elevator music may be computer-generated, with the actual score being composed entirely algorithmically.
This style of music is sometimes used to comedic effect in mass media such as film, where intense or dramatic scenes may be interrupted or interspersed with such anodyne music while characters use an elevator.
Some video games have used music similarly: Metal Gear Solid 4 where a few elevator music-themed tracks are accessible on the in-game iPod, as well as System Shock, Rise of the Triad: Dark War, GoldenEye 007, Mass Effect, and Earthworm Jim.