In 1962, Levy discovered a problem with the phone lines at his factory: a loose wire was touching a metal girder on the building.
This made the building a giant receiver, so that the audio broadcast signal from a radio station next door would transmit through the loose wire, and could be heard when calls were put on hold.
[2] While other advancements have come to change and enhance the technology, it was this initial patent creation that began the evolution for today's music on hold.
Newer technology allows MP3 files to be downloaded automatically from the internet so that messages (or interesting content in the form of news and weather, among many) can be changed daily.
Modern wireless telephony relies on lossy audio codecs optimized for spoken voice transmissions, which dramatically reduces the necessary bandwidth at the expense of making any non-spoken content, such as music on hold, sound distorted.
A number of studies have been conducted, which highlight consumer perceptions of music on hold, reinforcing its use by businesses to improve standards of call handling.
[3][4] A CNN survey found that 70 percent of callers in the United States who hold the line in silence hang up within 60 seconds.
Commercial CDs eliminate the problems encountered with radio commercials, and they offer control over the selection of music; they do not, however, grant proper license for MOH use unless users first obtain permission from the song title copyright owner (when the song is not in the "public domain") and the mechanical copyright owner, or bodies that represent them, such as BMI or ASCAP.
In general, custom music on hold allows an organisation to: CDs (or other MOH formats, such as MP3 files) can be custom-created to suit the particular needs of a business.
A program loaded onto an existing computer and connected to the phone system can allow automatic content updates interspersed with company information.
In a YouTube video, Tim mentioned the following on how he created the sound and why the stereo version is not very good: The reason was that I used an Alesis Midiverb II or III, specifically the 3 tap pan, to hide the fact that I was playing this live on a DX7IIFD and the notes would either cut off when I'd play unison patches and run out of polyphony or when I'd change patches.
[11][12] It is has also featured in a This American Life episode called "Stuck in the Middle," wherein a man is obsessed with finding the name and creator of the "haunting" melody.
[citation needed] The trend toward hosted IP telephony for business phone systems is demanding changes in music on hold message technology.
Such copyright protection has existed since just after the turn of the 20th century, and most music written before 1900–1910 from impressionism back to baroque and antiquity is said to be "in the public domain".
[citation needed] All music written after this period, which is copyrighted under multiple acts of congress, is owned by the author(s) or their assignees.
Specific to telephonic MOH (music-on-hold), the US laws currently protect the copyright owners from unlawful, unpermitted use of their music titles in over-the-phone broadcast.
[14] Any person or business wishing to use current, popular, post 1900–1910, copyrighted music for MOH purposes may only lawfully do so by obtaining permission from the owner.
Currently, performance rights societies such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC will sell blanket permission to use music titles in their catalog for MOH purposes.
[citation needed] It is generally known within the on-hold industry that some performance rights societies, with regional offices and staff, both monitor and prosecute persons and businesses that infringe on the copyright of title holders in their libraries.
In a Bud Light commercial aired during the Super Bowl LVII telecast in 2023, actor Miles Teller, his wife and their dog start dancing to "Opus Number One" on her phone while waiting to talk to a customer service representative.