The campaign fights background music in public places such as hospitals, libraries, swimming pools, pubs, shops and restaurants.
In support of this view, Pipedown makes the following additional points:[citation needed] One of the campaign's early successes was achieved by members protesting to Gatwick Airport about the piped music played throughout there.
Pipedown members can post places – pubs, hotels, restaurants, bookshops – that are free of piped music on the Quiet Corners website.
On 15 March 2000 Robert Key, then MP for Salisbury, introduced a bill into the House of Commons "to prohibit the broadcasting of recorded music in certain public places", principally hospitals.
[12] On 16 June 2006 Lord Tim Beaumont, the only Green Party peer, introduced a bill to prohibit piped music and television in hospitals.
[14] The campaign has been criticized on several fronts: that it is negative in spirit, even anti-music, also that it is elitist, being supported only by a minority of mostly older people who are out of touch with the commercial reality that customers demand music in most premises.
[16] Pipedown counters these claims by pointing to chains, such as Wetherspoons pubs, John Lewis & Partners, Waitrose, Primark, Aldi and Lidl, which all thrive free of piped music.