1 Introduction

In 1970, the City of Helsinki decided to conduct an experiment at three of its premises aimed at studying the effects of using Muzak products. The experiment focused on employee satisfaction, self-perceived work performance, measured productivity, and customer impressions. The endeavour was inspired by a proposition from Finnestrad, the local Muzak franchisee. A project report (City of Helsinki 1970) was archived in the personal files of Mr Eero Vallila, the owner and chief executive of the company, and found decades later by background music researchers.

The music system was installed on the shop floor where employees worked in the city’s central laundry department and the car repair shop of their building office. For assessment in customer service premises, the city chose its child welfare office. A survey was conducted charting the views of the employees and measuring the efficiency of their work. Interestingly, the question the survey asked regarding choosing an option other than Muzak offered only one alternative, the Finnish public radio music programme Sävelradio (see subsection 4.2).

From the point of view of Finnestrad, the results were disappointing. Contentedness was deemed ‘fairly good’ in the employee sample and ‘good’ in the child welfare customer sample. No increase in either efficiency or productivity was detected. The outcome was precisely opposite to the marketing message Muzak was attempting to convince potential clients of at the time: that any music could entertain people, but it took scientifically tested Muzak to make organisations and businesses churn out more profit and productivity. In the end, the report did not recommend making Muzak a part of the city employees’ workdays; it did, however, recommend that a subscription to the Muzak system be procured for the customer service space of the child welfare offices.Footnote ²

This episode touches on at least three points relevant to this Element. Firstly, the power of music – however ingeniously tailored – to bring about intended results is and always has been limited and subject to a multitude of variables. Secondly, the historical changes in music cultures have significantly affected the market trends for functional music products: the idea of entertaining child welfare customers with background music products using taxpayer money would probably sound alien in any decade other than the 1960s and 1970s. Thirdly, the prevailing music culture of the time invariably affects the discussion and circumstances surrounding background music: employees given one alternative to Muzak – Sävelradio – might reveal a preference for it in their responses, which they did. The result, however, says more about the music listening culture in Finland in 1970 than any universal boost in work capacity, atmosphere, or general productivity as a result of either alternative.

Background Music Cultures in Finnish Urban Life is inspired by these kinds of observations of the past and present cultural conditions of using functional music in everyday life. It is the first concise ethnomusicological, sensory ethnography-oriented, and fieldwork-based analysis of music in urban environments, drawing from our research project ACMESOCS: Auditory Cultures, Mediated Sounds and Constructed Spaces (2019–22). This Academy of Finland funded research takes auditory culture and the materiality of background music practices seriously and analyses them as part of sonic environments and their socio-spatial contingencies.Footnote ³ The project’s three research strands scrutinised (1) the development of the commercial sonic environment and its implied human object, the listener-consumer, referring to the target group of the background music industry – at whom its message has been and is currently aimed; (2) economic, technological, legislative, organisational, and cultural factors transforming urban acoustic environments in the context of ubiquitous music, including novel products like the generative software used in creating branded musical ambience; and (3) experienced and reclaimed acoustic environments to understand people’s experiences, perceptions, and actions in urban and commercial environments, especially regarding ubiquitous musics.

Researching urban auditory cultures, ACMESOCS focused on how these are experienced, articulated, and reclaimed. We are interested in shedding light on social, legal, economic, and technological factors that have an effect on the historical development of the background and foreground of the music industry, on the construction of contemporary sonic environments, and on the use of individual meaning-making in various public and commercial environments. The aim is to include a diversity of listening and experiencing and to give room to a range of approaches by introducing the added precision of crowdsourced and field materials.Footnote ⁴

Although the relationship between music, place, and listening has been extensively studied (see e.g. Reference Stockfelt and JärviluomaStockfelt 1994; Reference BornBorn 2013; Section 2 in this Element), interest in background music specifically has been somewhat limited. This Element analyses a combination of the agency of the groups that are designing and experiencing background music: producers, people working in environments filled with background music, and city dwellers, who are often cast in the role of consumers. This approach sheds light on the functionality of background music beyond more general notions of sales promotion and customer persuasion. Background music has also frequently been portrayed in research as a uniform phenomenon, or even as an identifiable musical genre. In our view, the state of play is rather a plurality of background music cultures: certain shared global marketing logics and functions with considerable differences in local emphasis.

Compared to the often sleek and smooth design of playlists, the experience of music among the urban din is often more rudimentary. Urban dwellers participate in and pass through living acoustic environments where they encounter lo-fi technology in playback systems: muffled and compressed music, barely audible between layers of hums, voices, and sounds. The most common situation in which one encounters background music is moving past loudspeakers in hallways and stores. This causes the music to be heard in dynamic glides, waves of intensifying and weakening sounds, momentary and random, presenting us with methodological questions: which parts of the ‘music not being listened to’ are actually audible to start with, and to whom – how is it relevant, and how can this relevance be studied? How can the diversity of the listeners and their listening abilities be considered as a relevant aspect with regard to the urban experience of music?

We explore background music as a central dimension of modern and postmodern urbanity. Music has a long history as a part of commerce, marketing, and consumption, as well as a fundamental part of urban culture. We propose that background music as a phenomenon is, by definition, tied to the figure of the listener-consumer, the modern urbanite who is, on one hand, a creation of the advertising industry and, on the other, an individual within a mediatised music culture who is able to dishearken (borthöra, Reference Stockfelt and JärviluomaStockfelt 1994: 20), or pay no attention to music. Referencing the formulations of mediated urbanity and urban media studies (Reference Tosoni and RidellTosoni & Ridell 2016), where urban space is seen as a networked and bodily context of media consumption, this Element brings forth the densely mediated and overlapping acoustic realities that are embedded in the urban fabric, woven into the very infrastructure and material conditions of urban space. Background music makes urban spaces recognisable, negotiable, and distinctive. Playing background music is a mediatised place-making process through which urbanity can be listened to.

Our point of departure is to study background music as culture. Studying music as culture may identify how societal values such as hierarchy or individualism are reflected in musical conceptualisation, behaviour, and sound (Reference NettlNettl 1983/2005: 217–18). Researching music as humanly organised sound in given circumstances refers to not only the end product but also process and activity. This includes the interactions between human beings, motivations behind their behaviours, and the significance they attach to them. These intellectual, physical, cultural, and social dynamics and processes generate musical products. Music is made perceptually, conceptually, and emotionally. This process, termed as musicking, refers to how music is not just made but also responded and assigned meaning to. (See Reference BlackingBlacking 1973; Reference SmallSmall 1998; Reference RiceRice 2014: 5–6, 9.)

Tia DeNora’s seminal Music in Everyday Life (Reference DeNora2000), based on fieldwork carried out in the 1990s, provided a wide-ranging account of people and music in everyday life in Britain. In our Finnish research setting, we focus on one phenomenon within everyday musical experience: the use of background music. We go further in contextualising it in its ‘unsolicited’ form, holding on to the experiential approach while also including the structures of the contemporary digital background of the music industry and its spatial and cultural manifestations. As an enhancement of a culture-specific analysis of the Finnish case, this Element provides a methodological tool applicable to understanding ‘background music in culture X’. This model will enable taking into account specific features of each local culture – for example, those related to music, sound, the service sector, urban architecture, public and commercial broadcasting, and the mediascape as a whole.

Contrary to popular media discourse that treats background music as one-dimensional or manipulative, this Element offers a broader understanding of music culture as an historical and spatiotemporally bound phenomenon for the non-expert in the field. Based on extensive ethnographic data gathered through interviews, surveys, and fieldwork (such as listening walks and participatory observation), and supported by archival research, it will also present a novel data-gathering method, suitable for collecting information on everyday experiential phenomena as ephemeral as background music. This approach, combining walking methods, mapping, sound diaries, crowdsourcing, and use of music recognition apps and instant messaging, can be applied to educational projects, for example. We tap into examples like the use of music during the Christmas season, in shopping malls or sex shops, and historical cases like background music in primary schools, and so on. The sections delve into the profession of the background music designer/producer as well as the working environment of the cashier and the restaurant patron, among others. Finland, with its particularities in urban and environmental structures, along with its economic and music industry history, is our research context. Despite its cultural focus, the methodology and theoretical considerations in this Element are applicable to other countries and contexts.

An essential part of the cultural study of background music is the examination of the materiality of sound – aspects such as the spaces and systems that reproduce sound and how they function. Technology plays an essential role in the quality of the sound of music and how that sound carries to different parts of a given space. Among the factors influencing the outcome are the type of loudspeaker system and its age, how the system is built, the number of speakers, and the extent of the infrastructure on which the system depends for its functionality (Wi-Fi, power grid, system design, installation, maintenance, and repair). Integrated sound systems with dozens of loudspeakers can be almost invisible and thus accentuate the idea of the control of the system as being remote and disconnected.

This Element helps in building the reader’s awareness and skills that create ‘functional music literacy’ (cf. ‘media literacy’). This means an understanding of, for example, the agencies, spatial factors, and cultural conventions at play in urban commercial spaces with music. Background music processes are viewed as music cultures, taking form from ideologies, institutions, infrastructures, and material objects. The background music industry caters to culturally diverse ears, and the circumstances in which it is consumed vary likewise. Due to the Finnish context and the ethnomusicological approach, the study is culture-sensitive and specific, providing a fresh perspective on a phenomenon generally understood as industry-led, behavioural, and global.

The structure of this Element follows the lines of background music production – ‘from the factory to the consumer’, so to speak. In this section, we map out the concept of background music along its contingencies and present some relevant scholarly discussion from recent years. A contextualising section follows, explaining how we understand the Finnish context of the study and how different cultural, societal, and infrastructural characteristics shape the culture of background music locally. This section demonstrates the historical formation (from the 1960s until today) of the listener-consumer, that is, the model audience member for sonic advertising, and also deals with the early years of the background music industry in Finland. In the third section, based on extensive interviews, we elaborate how companies providing background music services operate and how they see themselves as actors in the fields of music and advertising. Publicly funded and commercial radio stations will also be presented as providers of background music. The following section moves from the production of background music services to the commercial space and to the service sector, consisting of people listening to background music several hours a day. This section, based on a large survey, interviews, and fieldwork observations, examines how people work with ‘music not chosen’ and how they understand it as affecting their well-being. The fifth section focuses on the so-called end users of background music, the urban dwellers, and their everyday encounters with it. A case analysis demonstrating a seasonal disruption (Christmas) in the everyday implementation of background music aims to develop a toolkit of ethnographic methods suitable for a dense urban environment. In the last section, we discuss some current changes in the field and present a methodological checklist for studying background music that we hope will inspire students and researchers interested in the urban, music, and auditory culture.

2 Mapping Background Music as a Phenomenon

Background music as a phenomenon is multifaceted, and there are various perspectives from which to view it. Working towards a definition for this research, we start from the following: by background music, we mean mediated music played non-stop in commercial and public spaces, supporting/assisting/accompanying other activities of a target group/city dwellers, with a function related to commercial profitability or work productivity. It is also usually created for temporary enjoyment and selected by someone (at the ‘factory’) not expecting the listener (the ‘consumer’) to stay and focus on the music.

To elaborate further on this historically and locally changing use of music, some analytical questions focusing on its infrastructural, social, economic, and ideological aspects can be helpful. The entanglement of these diverse topics is outlined in what follows (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Contextual vivisection of the phenomenon of background music. Left: the nature of built space and the technology used for playback can be seen as infrastructural elements. Bottom left-hand corner: we understand collating and regulating as agency-related categories. Right: the perception of background music can be analysed on the level of experience. Bottom right-hand corner: categories related to the function and targeting of played music.

Though not to be read as too hierarchical or definitive but rather as dismantling the phenomenon of background music to gain analytical insight, Figure 1 specifies seven approaches in the form of questions: Where is it played? What is the playback medium? Who is the music collated by? Who regulates it? For whom is it played and how is it perceived? And, finally, for what ends is it played? The questions mentioned here are related to the concept of agency in background music, which is crucial in any study of music or sound in an ethnomusicological or anthropological context. In this study, the concept of agency refers to individual and collective capacities for action in music-related settings (Reference Karlsen and Sturman.Karlsen 2019; Section 5). The diverse agencies are manifested sonically in specific contexts of time, place, and listener.

The city, a dense geographic concentration of people and things, can be understood as a form of music as well. The density of the soundscape (perceived as the increasing number of loudspeakers) has stirred up a critique of ‘piped music’, a discussion similar to the environmental concern of urban habitats in the 1960s: mechanised music and PA systems were discussed as a form of pollution and excess detrimental to a healthy environment. This discourse on noise pollution is still very much present in discussions about the use of city space and urban community life. The uninterrupted sonic presence of background music is characteristic of media technologies that help in urban spatial organisation and navigation. Our ‘factory-to-consumer’ point of departure resonates with urban studies in its interest in the planning and designing of space and how it is re-made through practical use, incorporating communication technologies as necessary equipment (see Reference Krajina, Stevenson, Krajina and StevensonKrajina & Stevenson 2020: 2).

Background music – like work uniforms – is a material practice that has emerged with modernity in the service industries. Whereas uniforms are more generally the result of an ‘extreme rationalisation of appearance’ (Reference Tynan and GodsonTynan & Godson 2019: 2, 4), background music can be characterised as a sonic and spatial manifestation of a similar rational approach. Both are related to a fundamental transformation of the experience of time and space in the everyday life of Western capitalist societies in the first half of the twentieth century. The work uniform enables clients to identify members of staff and also marks service employees as working in and belonging to the business premises. In the case of background music, the identifying and orienting effect is less clear, and the relationship of both the workers and the customers to the sound material can be ambiguous, sometimes subject to negotiation and reflection.

The different notions of background music itself are somewhat contradictory. Anahid Kassabian states that there is no commonly agreed name for music not chosen by the listener. ‘Background music’ is sometimes in the foreground; ‘business music’ refers to the economic role of the music; ‘environmental music’ refers to its role in forming contexts; and ‘programmed music’ refers to its production and distribution, leaving out its consumption. Kassabian prefers the concept of ‘ubiquitous musics’ being always present but beyond our control, ‘slipping under our thresholds of consciousness’ (Reference Kassabian, Horner and SwissKassabian 1999/2006: 117). Affects such as bodily responses to background music or any other stimuli take place before conscious understanding. These responses pass into thoughts and feelings, leaving behind a residue that becomes ‘the stuff of future affective responses’ (Reference KassabianKassabian 2013: xiii–xv).

The term ‘ubiquitous music’ covers multiple listening experiences, starting from radio, which has historically provided a wide range of musics for ubiquitous listening. With the advent of digital listening technologies, people have unprecedented control over what they listen to in their everyday life. There is no link between specific listening approaches and specific music styles, nor can ubiquitous or background music be identified as a particular genre. ‘Shopping, sleeping, and secretarial work take place in such radically different contexts and across such radically diverse demographic or identity groups that there is no reasonable way of labeling ubiquitous musics and genre in any ways in which the term is generally used’ (Reference Boschi, Kassabian, Quiñones, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiBoschi et al. 2013: 6–7). Instead of a specific style of music, we need to concentrate on the alleged function of music, since almost any music genre can be selected for use as ubiquitous or background music. Apart from listening, we also study other ways of interacting with music, such as dancing and singing.

Ubiquitous musics can be defined by their relationships to listening and attention and by their description as ‘musical events that take place alongside other activities’ (Reference Boschi, Kassabian, Quiñones, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiBoschi et al. 2013: 6–7). The significance of the act of listening stands out, for example in the background music companies’ attempts at catering to diverse ears. In 1981, a former Muzak representative in Finland wrote in an opinion piece that, unlike the content he described as ‘distracting’ background music, their content was ‘not meant to be listened to but heard’ (Helsingin Sanomat 1981). As an illustrative example of the shift in background music culture, many current businesses in the trade have a reverse marketing strategy: instead of inquiring about their clients’ own preferences for and conceptions of music, companies provide them with diverse music compilations, encouraging them to base their procurement decisions on listening.

In spite of undeniable similarities with ubiquitous music, we decided to use the concept of background music in this Element. Ubiquitous music and ubiquitous listening were coined for scholarly use – as tools for academic work. Background music is a concept used in the communication between representatives of the background music industry and their customers, as well as in the media, when music used in public spaces is commented on and discussed. This is also the concept we used while interacting with the participants of our research.

Conceptually, this Element draws from soundscapes and sonic environments, often used synonymously (Reference SchaferSchafer 1977: 274), although soundscapes emphasise how individuals and society understand an acoustic environment through listening (Reference TruaxTruax 2001: xviii). In given contexts, background music can be characterised as a form of a sonic environment, referring to sound’s immersive qualities since the word ‘environ’ connotes ‘surrounding’ and ‘enclosing’. Our auditory field encompasses 360 degrees, whereas the concept of soundscape has visual connotations, thus referring to panoramic perception (Reference UimonenUimonen 2020b: 58). Drawing from Reference Pinch and BijsterveldPinch and Bijsterveld (2004) and Reference KassabianKassabian (2013), the concept of a ‘sound environment’ was coined to describe a relationship between music, audiences, and everyday life. It includes variables such as space, time, body, and choice of the technology needed for the diffusion and consumption of music. This approach not only should include issues such as gender, race, and ethnicity (Reference Nowak and BennettNowak & Bennett 2014: 442) but also should be refined to take culture-specific, historical, or language-related aspects of music consumption into consideration – especially in the context of background music.

In this Element, we do not aim to propose an overarching concept in understanding background music and its diverse contexts. Its strength lies in understanding how the whole from-the-factory-to-the-consumer chain operates in everyday life – a concept often used in vague articulations of musical significance in different contexts and spaces (Reference Nowak and BennettNowak & Bennett 2014). Music and the everyday are connected to time, and therefore to routines and repetitions: ‘events that happen every night or every week, even every month and every year are part of mundane, ordinary living’ (Reference Hesmondhalgh, Hesmondhalgh and NegusHesmondhalgh 2002: 125–6). In this respect, background music can be viewed as one subcategory of staple music (Reference Uimonen, Heikkinen, Kilpiö and MantereUimonen 2014). In the latter half of the twentieth century, sound-reproducing technologies became widely available and commonplace and, more importantly, part of everyday practices. Unlike gramophone records, which could only be purchased from specialised shops, compact cassettes were available from Finnish grocery stores, supermarkets, and service stations, like other staple products, from the 1970s. Music consumption changed because of music’s availability and new dissemination channels. (Reference Kilpiö, Kurkela and UimonenKilpiö et al. 2015: 31.)

Commenting on the history of recorded music and its social effects in Performing Rites (Reference Frith1998: 236), Simon Frith concluded music was everywhere and no longer in need of framing via a special place or time: ‘there is less and less sense of music being “appropriate” to certain times and places’. Recording and transmission enabled new uses of music, especially when used to accompany everyday life at work and during leisure time in diverse environments – a phenomenon characterised as ‘transphonia’ (Reference UimonenUimonen 2005). Technologically mediated listening situations demanded new or ‘adequate’ modes of listening: the ‘situation in which one encounters music conditions music itself’, and a listener needs competence not only to listen but also to dishearken music (Reference Stockfelt and JärviluomaStockfelt 1994: 20; Reference Stockfelt, Schwarz and Siegel1997) – or not to interact with music in any other sensorial way. Music has also become mobile and follows its users practically everywhere (Reference FrithFrith 1998: 236; see also Reference TaggTagg 1984). Frith’s comment on music and place holds true thirty years later, with augmented dimensions. With ubiquitous mobile phone networks and Wi-Fi connections, users of digital services are online continuously, even when asleep. This lays the foundation for contemporary 24/7 uses of music.

Contemporary staple music is a phenomenon with lots of potential scholarly interest. It is undoubtedly connected to urbanism but not inherently urban in itself: rather, with staple music, urbanity can be brought into almost any environment. Its uses are diverse, and they have manifested in birdsong in public lavatories (like in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport), music used in museums and installations – or, recently, a Spotify playlist compiled by the Finnish state-owned railway company, advertised on cardboard coffee cups used in the trains’ restaurant cars and accessible through a QR-code and the passengers’ own mobile devices as a ‘gift’ from the train company.

3 Scholarly Approaches to Background Music

As a modern and ubiquitous phenomenon, background music has been approached by different academic disciplines with different research interests. These have included psychology of music, historical research, sociology of music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and sound studies. Case studies have scrutinised topics such as music and violence (Reference Johnson and CloonanJohnson & Cloonan 2009), the relationship of music, youths, and everyday life (Reference Nowak and BennettNowak & Bennett 2014), annoying music (Reference TrottaTrotta 2020), the philosophy of ambient sound (Reference SchmidtSchmidt 2023), the influence of background music in wine selection (Reference North, Hargreaves and McKendrickNorth et al. 1999), and whether romantic music influences consumer behaviour in a florist shop (Reference Jacob, Guéguen, Boulbry and SamiJacob et al. 2009).

There is an extensive body of research on how stores use music to evoke reactions in customers and, further, to influence customers’ decision-making. This has been studied, for example, from the viewpoint of premises playing loud music to increase activity or fast music to pace the in-door traffic flow (Reference Smith and CurnowSmith & Curnow 1966; Reference MillimanMilliman 1982), and the interactive effect on music tempo and mode (minor key) on in-door sales (Reference Knöferle, Spangenberg, Herrmann and LandwehrKnöferle et al. 2011). It has also been suggested that music modifies people’s first impressions of products (Reference ZanderZander 2006) and influences their choices when deciding between two competing foods (Reference Yeoh and NorthYeoh & North 2010); and that background and foreground music shapes emotional responses in the mall (Reference Kang and YiKang & Yi 2019 – carried out in a laboratory setting). The majority of these studies represent disciplines differing from a culturally sensitive research paradigm and are interested in consumer behaviour rather than diverse agencies changing, experiencing, and affecting background music.

Commercial environments are being built with a thorough understanding as well as exploitation of the use of several stimuli simultaneously, such as lights, scents, visuals, and sound, to create desired atmospheres and to influence the consumer’s purchasing intentions (Reference Spence, Puccinelli, Grewal and RoggeveenSpence et al. 2014). The formal and practical knowledge of responses and a wide range of new technologies have led to a situation in which affective responses ‘can be designed into spaces, often out of what seems like very little at all’ (Reference ThriftThrift 2004: 67–8). At a Starbucks coffee shop, this can mean ‘everything from the obvious, like sofas and fabrics and wood and color schemes, to the subtle, like how few CDs to have available or font choices for signs, is carefully selected to create a particular affective response’ (Reference KassabianKassabian 2013: 91).

Contemporary circumstances of experiencing background music are thus somewhat different from the musicking settings that had been of academic interest until the 1980s. New questions and approaches became necessary. As one of the first scholars to take an interest in the area, and specifically Muzak, Ronald Radano considered the shift in aesthetic experience produced by what he called ‘consensus music’, urging for a new approach recognising ‘both levels of musical awareness, one reflective and the other nonreflective’ (Reference RadanoRadano 1989: 458). Especially in urban spaces designed for consumption, background music is usually omnipresent, sometimes also overlapping with other music and sound sources: several pieces of music can be heard in a given place at the same time.

Emily Thompson explains in The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900–1933 how scientists and engineers manipulated material and architectural constructions to control sound in urban space. The environments converted can be characterised as modern. Firstly, they were efficient and stripped down of sounds considered unnecessary. Secondly, they advanced efficient behaviour in those who heard or listened to them by minimising noise and maximising productivity. Thirdly, they were also modern by becoming products and commodities in a culture defined by the act of consumption and evaluated by the listeners. Moreover, ‘man’s technical mastery over his physical environment’ and nature transformed traditional relationships between sound, space, and time. (Reference ThompsonThompson 2002: 2–4.) Although Thompson’s book deals predominantly with architectural acoustics, the phenomena observed also set the stage for the use of background music. Furthermore, technologically mediated musical sounds and reorganised sonic environments resulted in emerging new trends of listening.

Pre-industrialisation manual work was often accompanied by singing to coordinate and pace work and to provide aesthetic pleasure and stimulation. Music was related directly to work through its rhythms, the sounds of the tools, and physical movement. Mechanisation and regulation of work during the industrial period diminished this need and function, and noisy machines made singing impractical. During the Fordist industrialisation in the twentieth century, broadcast music was introduced in British and US workplaces from the top down, following the theories by Frederick Taylor and aimed at controlling the labour process. In contemporary contexts, with professionals engaged in mental work, music is often listened to individually by workers or broadcast in service settings. (Reference Dibben, Haake and BornDibben & Haake 2013: 151–2.)

Pre- and post-industrial uses of music can be characterised as two separate phases or ages using unmediated and mediated music, respectively. Unmediated music refers predominantly to acoustically transmitted, oral, and thus unique music, whereas mediated music means widely available, printed, recorded, and electronically and digitally mediated music (Reference Kurkela, Lahti, Uimonen and HeikkinenKurkela et al. 2009: 3). Sensed environments are not only interpreted but actively produced within the triangular relationship among the sensing individual, the environment, and sensorial information, as suggested by Steven Reference Feld, Feld and BassoFeld (1996: 91): ‘As place is sensed, senses are placed; as places make sense, senses make place.’ The notion resonates with Georgina Born’s ideas of music, sound, and space intertwining in complex ways. Music and sounds are mediated by subjectivity, corporeity, and movement through location. In addition, social multiplicity of the same space of subjects constitutes new social relations. Also, temporal mediation transforms the constellation of sound and space in a given acoustic environment. (Reference BornBorn 2013: 19.) Lived experience involves constant shifts in sensory figures and potentials for multisensory interactions.

Like any other music, background music can be interpreted as constructing self-identity – ‘as a device for reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is’ (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 63). It may not be selected by the person who happens to hear it, but it still affords an opportunity for active listening and memory retrieval. Ethnomusicology and anthropology of sound both approach music and sounds as human culture, looking past music’s stimulus or influence on its listeners, or the assumption that listeners could be reduced to simply passive receivers of music. This approach is in line with contemporary ideas of the power of music as constructed by the listener interacting with the music.

Scholarly interests have also reflected the changes in the background music industry and their manifestations in urban space, as well as reactions to mediated music in public places. In their promotion of acoustic design and improvement of sonic environments, early soundscape scholars and pedagogists took a critical stance towards background music and considered it inherently dubious. Part of this can be explained by Muzak Corporation’s widespread presence in the 1960s and 1970s, criticised by soundscape scholars oriented towards Western classical music and related listening practices. The time was ripe for criticism: in 1969, the General Assembly of the International Music Council of UNESCO passed a resolution on ‘abusive use, in private and public places, of recorded or broadcast music’ (see Reference SchaferSchafer 1977: 97–8).

Composer and pedagogue R. Murray Schafer rightly concluded that ‘for the first time in history an international organisation involved primarily with the production of sounds suddenly turned its attention to their reduction’ (Reference SchaferSchafer 1977: 97–8; italics in original). The statement aimed at reducing music was motivated by surprising and in some cases unwanted encounters with background music, indicating an increase of its use. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who served on the Council’s Executive Committee, rebelled against having to be a ‘captive audience’ in an airplane playing background music (Reference LanzaLanza 1995: 153). Background music was equally disliked by the younger generation of popular music listeners. When the rock and folk music of the 1960s began to tackle issues related to culture, politics, and sexuality, the easy-listening arrangements of ‘Muzak’s bowdlerized hits seemed more and more like an affront’ (New Yorker 2006). Already in the late 1960s, a small company called Yesco challenged Muzak by selling what it called foreground music (Reference BaumgartenBaumgarten 2012). This change of business logic – replacing background music with foreground music – is described by Jonathan Sterne as follows: ‘Why listen to cheesy remakes when you can hear the original?’ Muzak jumped on the foreground bandwagon in 1983 (Reference Sterne, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiSterne 2013: 124) and launched its Foreground Music One channel in 1985. Foreground music’s momentum coincided with lifestyle research trends in their attempt to study particularly ‘the post-hippie hyper-individuals’ and their preferences, including music (Reference Lanza, Richardson, Gorbman and VernallisLanza 2013: 623).

Michael Reference Bull, Richardson, Gorbman and VernallisBull (2013: 630–1) analyses sonic mediation through the filter of technologies that afford responses among city dwellers as Fordist, post-Fordist and hyper-post-Fordist. The first one refers to collectively experienced technologies colonising social spaces, for example shopping centres; post-Fordist refers to niche marketing, for example music played in specific shops to provide the correct ambience for shopping; and hyper-post-Fordist refers to mobile technologies and their users creating individualised soundscapes for themselves. It is essential to understand that all three sound experiences exist simultaneously.

In his 1997 article on music in shopping centres, Jonathan Sterne finds similarities between foreground music and radio content and clarifies the programming logic called quantum modulation. Unlike background music’s attempt at gradual mood changes, foreground music aims for an unchanging mood. Quantum modulation maintains flow with the help of numerical values based on diverse criteria such as rhythm, tempo, artist, and genre. With the use of cross-fading, the transitions from song to song are seamless. It is assumed that listeners will hear music for a short duration, for example when visiting a shop (Reference SterneSterne 1997: 32). In essence, quantum modulation appears to be an elaborately named trademark developed by Muzak for categorising and selecting foreground music for different purposes as well as making their content stand out from parity products by competitors.

Reference Sterne, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiSterne (2013: 123) calls programmed music services a ‘second-order media economy’: they utilise music already circulated as a commodity and familiar to listeners. ‘Programmed music requires an earlier, “first” moment of circulation, prior to its own’. Second-order economy programmed music has also challenged scholars to rethink schemes of ‘production’ and ‘consumption’. This applies not only to programmed music: the same principles of second-media economy hold true with radio foreground music playlists, compiled of familiar songs and tunes targeted to given audiences for everyday listening in different environments.

Finnish scholarly literature emphasises the culture-specific nature of background music. Despite being a part of the transnational music industry, background music practices in Finland are framed by conditions such as language issues or national legislation. Contributions include publications from ethnomusicologists, social historians, and soundscape researchers, with interests in practices transforming sonic environments. These include Muzak, use of radio in the workplace, and on-hold music, as well as music at department stores and shopping malls. (See e.g. Reference KilpiöKilpiö 2005 & Reference Kilpiö2011; Reference Ranta, Ampuja and KilpiöRanta 2005; Reference KokkoKokko 2016; Reference Kontukoski and UimonenKontukoski & Uimonen 2019.)

Background music providers and their clients want listeners and consumers to feel a certain way in stores or in other premises. The transnational challenge they face is that they ‘can no more guarantee listener’s responses to the music than the producer of any cultural text can guarantee its meaning in advance’ (Reference Sterne, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiSterne 2013: 126). As a result, they rely on existing recordings while aiming to increase production or consumption. Programmed music’s ability to elicit responses in listeners is constantly underlined in both background music promoters’ behavioural psychological explanations and ideological criticisms of (mis)use of music. However, like any other product ‘its purchasers buy it on its promise’ (Reference Sterne, Quiñones, Kassabian and BoschiSterne 2013: 126). Music does not act upon an individual as a stimulus. Its effect is the result of how individuals orient to it and how they interpret it, not to mention how they ‘place it within their personal musical maps’ of extra-musical associations (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 61). Although not commonly admitted among background music entrepreneurs, this is precisely what the CEO of one of the major companies pointed out to us in an interview quite straightforwardly. When asked if research of music was a matter of importance in their line of business, he stated how customer behaviour is affected by ‘current weather’ or issues such as ‘what Trump just said and what is going on in the South China Sea … whatever happens in an individual’s environment will have a strong effect on his/her consumer behaviour. It is difficult to say whether it was this specific music that we played that caused the collapse or increase of sales’. (ACMEi 2020c.)

What has remained largely unanswered and marginal in research is culture-sensitive contextualisation. Background music has often been viewed as a generic, global phenomenon, depleted of cultural characteristics. The conception has never been fully comprehensive, and accuracy has crumbled with each decade and development towards the end of the twentieth century. Specific culture-historical environments restrict, enable, and frame matters such as language used in song lyrics, national and regional transformation of technological environments, and possible differences and similarities in background music selection practices. This holds true especially in non-English-speaking countries (not to say that specific and diverse background music cultures would not exist in English-speaking cultures). Since this Element has taken the question of cultural dependence as one of the themes we wish to explore, we will next present the central socio-historical and cultural developments that form the backdrop to distinctive features in background music cultures in Finland. We hope to present, by first concentrating on a case of a small northern European country, an itemisation and a set of questions that will help with producing a framework for creating workable methods in various background music cultures.

4 Historical Context: Cultural, Societal, and Infrastructural Characteristics

In this section, we present a concise overview of the circumstances and developments in Finland, for the reader to better grasp the locally conditioned background music cultures. The country went through exceptionally rapid structural changes during the 1950s and 1960s. Urbanisation picked up steam: in 1950, the majority of the population lived in rural areas, but by the early 1980s, the tables had turned, and some 60 per cent of Finns resided in urban areas (in Germany, for instance, the same percentage had been registered in the 1910s).

One of the most dramatic changes took place in the balance within the Finnish economic structure. The primary sector shrunk to a fraction of its share of employees, while the service sector expanded swiftly from a minor sector of employment into the most important one from the beginning of the 1960s (Reference Haapala, Peltola and HaapalaHaapala & Peltola 2018: 205–6). The Finnish service culture, on the other hand, has been relatively slow in evolving from matter-of-fact conduct of affairs towards hospitality and ‘giving people more than they expect’, sometimes referred to in Finnish colloquial language as ‘continental service culture’.

Private consumption also soared. The Finnish consumer society advanced considerably thanks to several developments: the edging away of post-war rationing, favourable circumstances in the world economy, structural changes in the local economy, and migration of the population to the cities (Reference Valkonen, Valkonen, Alapuro, Alestalo, Jallinoja and SandlundValkonen 1985: 211). In the early 1960s, living standards in Finland began to rise rapidly, and people had more money at their disposal. The supply of consumer goods expanded considerably. Paid annual leave increased from 9–12 days to 18–24 days, enabling more spending on leisure and culture. Promises of progress and well-being were associated with an ‘American lifestyle’ and consumer culture, with central local players in trade and industry constantly reporting about their study trips to the United States. (Reference Heinonen, Pantzar, Kipping and TiratsooHeinonen & Pantzar 2002: 44.) Background music systems were among the strategic solutions embraced widely in businesses with the aim of fulfilling these promises and ‘boarding the train of progress’. The ideological and structural forces behind background music adoption are thus particularly distinguishable in Finland.

Face-to-face vocal advertising on the streets, markets, and village roads had faded in the early twentieth century. The Finnish urban soundscape was becoming more noise-laden, and forms of commerce were changing. Itinerant traders and service providers who advertised by shouting and singing in urban spaces gave way to electronically transmitted audio-visual advertising (Reference KilpiöKilpiö 2001: 72–73), which gradually took off. An important aspect of consumerism for both the Finnish soundscape and city structure was motorisation, which happened ‘late and swiftly’ in Finland compared to the other Nordic countries (Reference Bergholm and ToiskallioBergholm 2001: 79–80). Between 1960 and 1973, the number of cars on Finnish roads and streets increased from around 255,000 to over 1 million, and continued to rise rapidly: by 1990, some 2.2 million cars had been registered for road use (ICRT 2022). The trend continued and strengthened, up to the point where Finland has become significantly more motorised than the rest of the Nordic countries (Reference RamseyRamsey 2022). From the point of view of soundscapes inherent to everyday life, this meant at least two developments: noise levels rose in street spaces, and hypermarkets became serious contenders for shopping and running errands in city centres. The insulated interiors of Finnish cars remained out of the advertisers’ reach in Finland for several decades, however, since car radios only played the public broadcasting channels until the deregulation – or more precisely, re-regulation – of radio broadcasting in 1985. On the whole, the 1970s saw major changes in the Finns’ outlooks on life. Emphasis on individuality and the pursuit of personal pleasure increased.

In restaurant premises, performing live music and playing recordings were closely supervised in Finland, mainly due to the strong position of local copyright organisations (Reference MäkeläMäkelä 2017). For most Finns, dining out was not common before the 1980s. The educated upper classes had warned people against restaurants in the late nineteenth century as ‘places where alcohol was served’. For decades, dining out was an elite custom, while many Finns kept shunning restaurants, on one hand assuming drunken depravity was going on inside, and on the other fearing they themselves would not master the intricate etiquette of restaurant culture. Finns who came of age in and after the 1980s showed a much more positive attitude towards dining and drinking out than the previous generations, and the range of different restaurants widened in Finnish cities. The somewhat negative image of Finnish restaurants also contributed to the 1960s and 1970s popularity of foreign concepts such as pizzerias, pubs, and Chinese restaurants. (Reference SillanpääSillanpää 2002: 215.)

In terms of sonic environment, and background music in particular, frequenting so-called ethnic restaurants is an interesting development. Before the arrival of restaurant chains, individual restaurant owners usually played whatever music they thought culturally suitable and accurate atmosphere-wise, meaning that patrons of ‘ethnic’ restaurants possibly heard quite diverse sounds and rhythms. The precise musical content could be subject to negotiations, as a former sales representative recalls:

Selecting songs was a time-consuming process, since one four-hour tape required one hundred songs to be hand-picked (Reference HietanoroHietanoro 2006). In the 1980s, the use of office and workplace music decreased, while the use of music in restaurants and the retail sector increased (Reference PaukkuPaukku 2006). The supply of background music evolved in line with changes in the Finnish restaurant culture. The earlier division into bars, dance restaurants, and food restaurants was challenged, and the restaurant chains and pizzerias introduced in the 1980s democratised eating out into a family event.

Today, the Finnish retail sector is exceptionally concentrated – a state of affairs recognised as a problem by the European Commission Directorate-General for Competition (Reference HukariHukari 2021: 13). Many reasons have been put forward to explain the situation. Among these are the cold climate, forcing consumers to limit their shopping to as few stores as possible; the passion for cars among Finns, sustaining the hypermarkets and driving urban design towards favouring and investing in them; the penny-pinching nature of the Finnish people, driving people to cheaper and larger stores; and the tradition of Finnish women as naturally belonging in the workforce and thus having limited time available for daily shopping. Chiefly, however, the concentration trend for the Finnish grocery trade was dictated by a strong takeover of cooperative groups already in the 1930s. By the end of the 1960s, the plight of small shops had accelerated: groups already accounted for 75 per cent of the grocery market, and over the next ten years, the share rose to over 90 per cent. (Reference KomulainenKomulainen 2018: 9–10: 237.)

The consequences for background music use are not clear-cut, partly since our background music company interviewees did not comment on the effects of the duopoly on contracts. Cooperative retail companies are managed regionally, and unlike visual uniformity, the background music solutions seem to vary slightly between regions. Unlike the cooperatives’ visual appearance, their background music is not uniform but is instead individually ordered from different music providers by regional cooperatives (ACMEi 2022a). At the individual level, some employees reflected on the state of play in our field material: ‘We think someone’s making a load of money by selling [our employer] that copyright-free music that’s ever so horrible and features the same pieces month after month’. (ACMEs/PAM 2021a.)

The cooperative retailing conglomerates had a significant role in expanding the size of individual retailing units in the country as well. Several cooperative groups made a purposeful effort in the 1960s to plan and promote a transformation in how daily consumer goods would be acquired in Finland (Reference HankonenHankonen 1994: 226–35). The vision was inextricably interlaced with the idea of suburb living and proceeded from small service outlets to shopping centres and further on to hypermarkets; from service to self-service; from popping over to various shops for different items, wrapped by the shop assistant, to collecting packaged goods, wheeling them to the checkout and on to the family car. Online shopping has further changed the soundscape of consumption to a more private event from a situation that formerly required interaction with other people and, namely, background music in public (see Reference Uimonen, Kytö and RuohonenUimonen et al. 2017: 11).

4.1 Listener-Consumer: Who Were ‘The Audience’?

As the production of background music and the sound design of consumer spaces has developed towards a unifying, branding, and holistic experience, the spectrum of background music has broadened. Central to this change is the figure of the listener-consumer, determined over the decades through increasingly profiled target groups. The ways of describing and analysing the ‘audience’ vary according to the available technology, music trends, and the level of privacy in spaces accessible for the use of functional music. Finnish texts written by advertising and background music professionals provide an interesting example of this development (see Reference Kilpiö, Järviluoma and PielaKilpiö 2016). In the 1940s and 1950s, Finnish listener-consumers were mostly defined in the texts as passers-by in public or semi-public spaces, easily alienated by mistakes such as excess volume, distortion in sound reproduction, or political content. The local urban soundscape carried considerably less musical content than in later decades, which meant that evading functional music was relatively effortless.

Figure 2

Advertising to listener-consumers in Tampere, 1958. The arrival of Father Christmas and the candy mascot Panda by helicopter drew a crowd to the Ratina ground. Regular television broadcasts had started in Finland the same year, gradually transforming locals from unpredictable and easily alienated listener-consumers in public spaces to an audience available most feasibly at home.

(Photo: Juhani Riekkola, Source: Vapriikki Museum Centre Photo Archives)

For advertising music-makers, television provided access to the listener-consumers’ homes – a dramatic change resulting in the professionals considering less the possible alienation and more the music’s memorability and general effectiveness. The 1960s listener-consumers appear in the texts as television viewers on one hand and as psychologically susceptible shoppers on the other. Due to the rising standards of living in the country at the time, the 1960s and 1970s writers devoted much attention to the diversifying tastes and musical preferences of listener-consumers. The term ‘target group’ (kohderyhmä in Finnish) was first used in the 1970s. In the later texts, spatial elements of making and experiencing advertising or background music receive less and less attention. They almost disappear, rendering background music as something that is directly communicated from the music content (sound recordings) to the listener-consumer’s mind while it was busy making purchasing decisions.

5 Around the Drawing Board: Providing Background Music

This section studies the analysts and designers of the background music industry by considering and contextualising their agency. In any environment where music is used, the concept of agency concerns individuals’ capacities for action in relation to music or music-related settings. It refers to not only how we do things with music but also how music does something to/for us. Collective music agency can be detected where music is used for structuring social encounters, coordinating bodily action, affirming and exploring collective identity, and knowing the world. (Reference Karlsen and Sturman.Karlsen 2019: 2–3.)

Embedded in the study of music in culture, agency can be considered to be a socio-musicological and ethnomusicological topic. It can be detected in the various ways in which a society musically defines itself: its taxonomy of music, its ideas of what music does, and in the way it changes its music, relates to, absorbs, and influences other music (Reference NettlNettl 1983/2005: 12–13). Although music is a ‘resource for modulating and structuring the parameters of aesthetic agency’ such as feeling, motivation, and desire (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 53), its use is enabled, restricted, and shaped by social and cultural contexts. A scholarly approach to any contemporary background music company’s actions and the agencies of its individual employees should consider the context where music is allegedly being experienced. This is related to the notion that music does not contain any inherent meanings transferrable to its listeners, although it carries an ‘immediate threat of history’ (Reference KassabianKassabian 2001: 3). For companies providing background music, the contextual reliance is both a blessing and a curse, since it means that music can be controlled to some extent, but total control cannot be achieved.

Agency is related to present-day music culture activities, but also to those aspects of the past that have helped the contemporary music culture to become what it is. Focusing solely on background music companies’ current professional environments may not sufficiently explain the existing practices of these companies. They need to be contextualised by charting the employees’ previous experience and networks. The contemporary background music industry in Finland is rooted in competence acquired in various sectors of commercial music media, including musicianship, local and commercial radios, disc jockeying, the live music industry, recording studios, and audio engineering. This means that prior to establishing careers in the background music industry, the CEOs and employees already have established networks and experience in retail sales, media, or Finnish music culture in general at their disposal.

By analysing musicking (the processes, discourses, and activities related to music) of four diverse Finnish background music companies, it is possible to see how agency is manifest in designing the sonic environments of commercial premises. These conscious choices in sonic environments are constructed with diverse motives by different actors to employ music ‘as an ordering material in social life’ (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: x). Different background music companies operate in the same field of business, such as in shopping environments or offering music branding services for individual shops and enterprises. Still, there are differences that help to flesh out the multifaceted nature of the industry and the specific areas or fields of expertise that warrant investigation. In one of our recent publications (Reference UimonenUimonen 2022a), agencies of background music companies turned out to be framed quite diversely in contexts of ownership, clients, music content, overall music profiles, music acquisition, music selection and governing, music evaluation, music platform, and client infrastructure. In what follows, we present examples of how these contexts affect the agencies observable in the companies.

6 Behind the Till: Background Music as a Tool for Service Work

In this section, we examine the views of service sector employees on ‘working with music’ as well as its impact on well-being at work and during leisure time. For businesses providing and buying background music for service workplaces and commercial premises, the rationale for it is explicitly economic: increasing sales. The most frequent listeners of background music, however, are employees such as salespeople, waiters, security guards, and hotel workers: during their workday, they hear an average of eight hours of music. In most cases, they do not get to choose the music themselves. This raises questions regarding the position of employees in relation to background music and what it is like to work with music. In terms of soundscape research, they constitute the functional acoustic community (Reference KytöKytö 2013: 22) best placed to articulate the meanings of their environments.

Compared with the rest of Europe, Finnish working life is characterised by ‘high levels of trust, low levels of tension between management and employees, good participation possibilities for employees, and developed social dialogue in workplaces’ (Reference Kauhanen and NevavuoKauhanen & Nevavuo 2021: 2). Besides varying degrees of power to influence the practices of music selection, workers have different ways of influencing and adapting to their working environment, and they apply different tactics in doing so (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 137; Reference de Certeaude Certeau 2013). They also work with music as a spatial element that, among other things, can function as a tool for them.

While the relationship between paying customers and background music as an element of service facilities has been relatively well studied (see e.g. Reference SterneSterne 1997; Reference Ranta, Ampuja and KilpiöRanta 2005; Reference StenbäckStenbäck 2016; Reference Kontukoski and UimonenKontukoski & Uimonen 2019), less academic attention has been devoted to our focus in this section – the relationships between service workers and the music of their workspaces. Reference Payne, Korczynski and CluleyPayne, Korczynski, and Cluley (2017) focused their analysis of extensive field data on the factors influencing the experience of background music and the consequences of these factors for the employee. They outlined a four-part model for the role of music in customer service work. The model places the musical environment on a scale from alienating to satisfying, and customer contact on a scale from purely positive to unambiguously negative. Positive communication between worker and client in an alienating musical environment can resemble a ‘co-conspirators’ encounter, whereby the worker confirms or implies that they, like the client, find the background music distasteful. Negative customer contact in an alienating musical environment, on the other hand, often leads to a deliberate ‘tuning out’. In the latter case, the employee alleviates the alienation not by sharing the experience, but rather by tolerating both stimuli, the annoying client and the tiresome music. On the other hand, if the employee finds the musical environment satisfying or indeed enjoyable, an opportunity arises to either bridge for sociality through music in the context of positive customer contact or to mitigate the debilitating effect of negative customer contact by focusing on the music as ‘a haven from customers’ (Reference Payne, Korczynski and CluleyPayne et al. 2017: 1423–4).

A recent Swedish study (Reference CarlénCarlén 2018) approached the issue from the perspective of well-being at work and improvement of working environments. Using a multiple-choice questionnaire, the study looked at how employees (n = 2127) perceived music – or the lack of it – in relation to their work environment, their involvement and level of knowledge in music selection processes, and the impact of these factors on their experience of music. The survey strongly recommended commissioning risk assessments in workplaces and the systematic inclusion of music in workplace improvement efforts.

In our study of over 800 Finnish service employees’ views on music in the workplace (Reference KytöKilpiö & Kytö 2021), we found the link between well-being at work and background music only tenuously linked to the employees’ personal musical preferences or opportunities for administering the precise musical content in the workplace. Far more significant were the opportunities to create one’s own agency in relation to workplace music – ideally through professional identity – and the meaningful use of sonic affordances in client interactions. Professional agency seems to play an important role in work-related well-being. This also came up during field work: a café worker explained that she could select music by choosing the radio channel, but personal preference was not a priority. According to her: ‘Yes, I can choose the channel myself, but I can’t play rock music [which I would prefer] because it’s not a rock venue – you have to think about the customers’ (ACMEf/Joensuu). A service sector workplace transforms the meaning of music into a professional one for the employees, relegating their personal musical relationships to secondary roles.

In our field material, some service sector employees also questioned the sonic architecture in which music is situated in the workplace. Their answers described the different (sonic) factors influencing the way music is heard, and the experience of space, embodiment, and, through this, comfort and well-being at work. They also reported on efforts to change their sonic environments. Based on our empirical evidence, focusing on background music alone, without taking into account the rest of the sonic environment, produces uncontextualised results. After all, background music is often motivated by its capacity to mask other sounds and to guarantee privacy in customer service situations; it is added to any commercial space largely in relation to the existing sonic setting: to mask other sounds or silence or to emphasise the ambience, décor, and features of the sales articles.

The role adopted by the employee in the construction of the soundscape is an indication of their agency. They can enhance their well-being at work by observing how the soundscape functions and how favourable conditions for it could be promoted. This idea of ‘diagnosing’ the good qualities, that is, the ‘health’ of the soundscape (Reference AmphouxAmphoux 1993), involves reinforcing those qualities within the soundscape that are deemed positive, increasing the awareness about attributes related to well-being to those who work in the soundscape, observing spatial and temporal sonic characteristics, and considering the sonic construction of social interaction. It also refers to protecting spaces from noise, that is, regulating and controlling sound sources and providing sound insulation. The worker, alone or with colleagues, can seek workable sound solutions if they see opportunities to do so. However, it is often seen as too complex, expensive, or requiring a major infrastructure effort. Moreover, this perceived extra work is often outside their formal job description. One respondent to the online survey stated unequivocally: ‘I am a gig worker and it is not my job to criticise the working environment of my clients’ (ACMEs/PAM 2021b). Of the respondents to the online survey, 18 per cent had not discussed music with colleagues at all. Workers seemingly often approach the health of the environment with either indifference, powerlessness, or the general idea of the soundscape as inherently flawed and therefore incurable, remediable only temporarily. This was also reflected in the comments by several interviewees that discussing music at the workplace was labelled as ‘complaining’ and thus best avoided.

In its simplest form, maintenance of the workplace soundscape happened by replacing what was playing with music of collective or an individual employee’s choice. Several restaurant employees reported a practice of switching to more upbeat ‘own music’ for the evening’s finishing touches after customers had left. Another routine maintenance measure was adjusting the background music volume. Just under half of the respondents to the online survey said they could adjust the volume of the music directly from the sound system. Understandably, this seems to be the practice in the hospitality sector, where patrons spend more time in the premises and often also view music as an element of their customer experience. One in four respondents – mostly from the retail sector – reported they could not control the volume (ACMEs/PAM 2021).

Playing music at the lower limit of the hearing threshold, that is, very quietly, is a tactic used by some workers to mask noise, for example, from air conditioning and escalators, as we observed at the Koskikeskus shopping centre in Tampere.Footnote ¹² Such tactics of background music use render audible only some of its frequencies and rhythmic elements, and possibly the singing voice. In some shops, turning down the volume to a level barely audible was tacitly agreed among the staff for music not liked, hoping the manager would fail to find out the business was paying for streaming non-audible music. In shops staffed by a single person, it was also possible to turn the radio on or off according to the number of customers entering the shop, and to thus control the customer space completely autonomously (ACMEs/Kk 2020a). Non-access to controlling the volume increases the laboriousness and effort required for sensory labour – the active process of domesticating and adapting to the sensory environment – especially in customer service situations. Pricking up one’s ears tires and stresses customers as well.

In soundscape descriptions, the describer typically ignores the sounds they produce, that is, the self as a sound source. This was also the case in our field material, in spite of the fact that sales work, restaurant catering, and other customer service labour is very much about talking. Respondents played an important role in producing the sonic environment of their workplace themselves, by not only speaking but also doing other chores emitting sound (carrying and shelving products, pushing carts, washing dishes, setting up tables, walking, using machines, etc.). Background music was described by the respondents as an element in a sometimes dense soundscape, the ‘healthiness’ of which was influenced at a worker level by two factors: the use of headphones and overlapping music.

Of the respondents to the online survey, one in five reported headphone use, for creating a personal sound space within the customer service premises, for both isolation (e.g. dishwashing shift with noise-cancelling headphones) and communicating with other employees (e.g. radiophones used by vendors and security guards). The use of a headset in one ear and a microphone on a shirt collar was common: ‘We have to wear an earpiece where someone is always chattering’ (ACMEs/PAM 2021c). These respondents were connected to overlapping audio infrastructures during their working hours, which could prove challenging when their speech work had to be placed in the context of the rest of the soundscape: a person speaking into the microphone could not know whether the other users could concentrate on listening at a given moment.

Our field data repeatedly mentions overlapping music. In the Koskikeskus centre, for example, several streams of background music could be heard simultaneously in the front areas of stores with open entrances. In such cases, employees reported feeling more comfortable deeper in the store, where the hallway music did not carry over. ‘Fortunately, the shop’s own music covers the shopping centre’s own elevator music [i.e. hallway music] quite well’ (ACMEs/Kk 2020b). When events took place in the lobby of the shopping centre, the sound equipment and the volume of the hallway music increased. Employees responded to the increase in sound sources by adjusting the volume of the background music in their shops or turning it off completely. Sometimes playing overlapping music in shops was a subversive tactic to drown out hallway music seeping in. Maintaining aural and musical hygiene was also part of the job of the security guards. Specific management situations of overlapping music arose when young people spending their leisure time in the shopping centre played music through their own mobile phones and Bluetooth speakers. These rare situations produced unwanted, disturbing music (as far as the shopping centre management was concerned), and usually ended with security guards intervening to remove the unwanted sound sources.

Survey responses also highlighted the importance of using music and other forms of listening for well-being in the workplace. Employees might listen to their own playlists, podcasts, and audio books on their headphones during quiet times, or a hairdresser might take dance steps to the radio music during morning cleaning. Workers with job descriptions that did not include speaking to customers could be in touch with friends and family by phone on a very personal basis during their shift, or listen to music of their choice. As far as we can see, these types of agencies had a strong impact on the social well-being of the workers. After all, each service worker has their own musical world, their own personal listening and hearing limitations (with sensory sensitivities, hearing impairments, musical preferences, etc.).

Sometimes the responsibilities of taking care of the sonic environment are not evenly distributed among workers. This is due to their being seen as secondary in tasks given, and for that reason difficult to identify and negotiate among employees. In light of our data, it also appears that in work environments where workers are not given the opportunity to act on its music or sounds, there is a lack of common vision of a ‘healthy’ soundscape. The understanding of the appropriateness and functionality of the environment may also differ between the employee and the shopkeeper. In our view, opportunities for communal building of meaningful and inspiring acoustic spaces are missed by assuming that everyone manages their musical and sonic relationships on their own and finds isolated tactics to adapt to a soundscape determined by the sales strategies of the workplace. Understanding the functional acoustic community as a collective space for negotiation also allows for the sharing of responsibility for the burdensome sensory labour.

7 On the Town: Contesting Background Music

This section provides an analysis of the material side of background music auditory culture in situ: what is in fact audible and what is recognisable or meaningful. This section differs stylistically somewhat from the previous sections due to the experiential nature of the methods and the section’s objective – to ethnographically convey the everyday experience of background music in city spaces. Our research data (listening diaries and interviews) is collated with aurally diverse listener-consumers. It shows that for people more sensitive to sensory stimuli than average, the volume and quality of background music influences, for example, choices such as which shops and restaurants to visit and selecting walking routes and times in the city. For the hard of hearing, exposing oneself to background music can muddle the communicative environment thoroughly or, if played at a relatively low volume, be fully filtered out by the sound processors in their neuroprosthetic hearing aid. (ACMEi 2022c; ACMEi 2022d.)

Variability of attention and distraction is a key area of interest in the study of the urban environment and mediated urban space. Sensory overload in the form of distraction is a characteristic long associated with urban life in general (Reference Kytö, Krajina and StevensonKytö 2020). Considerable fluctuation in attention levels is partly related to the conceptual distinction between active and passive listening (Reference KassabianKassabian 2013). This distinction has also been an essential element in examining the putative effects of background music. The soundscape of a shopping centre consists of sounds and listening situations specific to its functions, providing an acoustic frame for the (in)audibility of music. These include the queuing at the checkout, the whirring of the ventilation, the clinking of ice-cream cups, the weighing of fruit, the advice given to customers, the footsteps of security guards, the chatter of young people, and the shrieking of tired children. At times, it can be very challenging to hear or recognise any music, as the sound resonates in an acoustically opaque space (ACMEf/Kk).

In many of our fieldwork spaces, background music was played at a surprisingly low volume, so that musical elements were barely audible through the rest of the soundscape. Songs are often not heard from start to finish but as melodies here and there, in the time before the listener steps off the tram, gets in line at the checkout, chats with their tablemate, or changes equipment at the gym. The randomness of the encounters between music and listener-consumer is reinforced in the case of hallway music by the practice of placing spoken advertisements with jingles in the middle of the songs (ACMEi2019b).

One aspect in the overlapping of musical streams is probably characteristic of the North: thermal insulation between the inside and outside of commercial premises is very tight, at least during winter. The music seldom seeps outside, and environmental policy (together with cultural norms concerning acoustic territories) makes the use of outdoor loudspeakers sparse or temporarily specific to seasonal markets or sports events. Shopping centres are also places for getting warm during wintertime, so they get selected on walking routes in the urban landscape just to walk through. The material space of shopping centres means enclosed but roomy spaces designed for a variety of purposes: walkways, car parks, and cafés, spread out along the centre’s corridors; department stores, where music from different departments mix randomly; specialised shops, restaurants, lifts, and thematic displays such as, for example, Christmas display windows with music playing in front. Hallway music ties together the nested and overlapping spaces, while the music of individual businesses separates them sonically.

Streaming music and the associated proliferation of playlists has created new music selection practices and built new relationships among actors. The music selection process has the potential for making background music a part of a small business’s local identity or overall ‘brand’, and it can also be an expression of the personal tastes of employees. The choice of music can be guided by the business’s needs by allowing staff to decide on the music to be played, particularly where staff are culturally similar to the target customers of the business (Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 137–138). Staff in restaurants and bars may take pride in the music they play to demonstrate their musical capital and create a sense of community in their workplace (ACMEf/Kk; ACMEf/Christmas). Sensory agency manifests itself through various tactics in the urban environment. Playlists can inform and advertise new music releases and remind about older favourites. This was a tactic of a gym instructor designing her new routines and choreographies we interviewed in Tampere. She rarely listened to the radio, but instead relied on background music in her favourite cafés and clubs for ideas and inspiration. For her, background music playlists had taken the role of recommender, traditionally a role for music journalists. (ACMEi 2020d.)

Figure 3

Old stereo including a CD and LP player buried under a desk at a skating store at Koskikeskus mall. The current playback system was an iMac tabletop computer (‘Streaming is much more convenient’). The old equipment was kept “in case of special events with DJs”.

Picture: Meri Kytö.

Background music practices in different environments allow for multiple levels of meaning-making and agency. In part, this music-related agency is part of the spatial interpellation, the recognition of ideology and its subjectification (see Reference AlthusserAlthusser 1976: 40): the mall addresses its customers with music and the customer listening to the background music can assume the role of the customer. Failure of interpellation may lead to resistance, frustration, and irritation. Reverse interpellation occurs when technology fails, when there is no music in the hallways, or when there is a sudden change to calm, with the risk that visitors suspect the mall is closing down for the day, ‘get confused, and leave’ (ACMEi 2019c). The discussion of interpellation can be linked to the interaction between the background music and the listener and to how the music is expected to affect them. Hearing background music is ultimately about the urban environment in which the music ’publicly addresses’ the subject. Instead of a stimulus, the subject takes the music as their own in the context in which it is played. In this event, the music, the subject’s attention, memories, and the prevailing circumstances come together, bringing disparate and disjointed elements together into a larger whole (see also Reference DeNoraDeNora 2000: 42–3).

The listener-consumer is on the move; their experience of the background music is one of encountering overlapping sound sources, noticing musical elements that grow stronger and weaker, momentarily and randomly. Therefore, distraction, attention, movement, and intention can be used as key experiential elements and as methodological starting points when examining the perceptions of background music. While the initial intention of using background music may be to steer the customers’ attention and actions in a desired direction, people frequently perceive music in more diverse and complex ways. The same music may feel calming or disturbing, depending on context and listener. For an employee, background music may appear as either an aid or a hindrance to concentration. Factors such as the listener’s physiology, sensitivity, abilities, culture, identity, and musical preferences all affect how music is perceived in a given situation. Background music also does not play in a sonic vacuum but is embedded in the overall sonic environment. The experience of background music is formed in relation to other sounds from machines, crowds, and working.

7.1 Methodological Takeaways: Everyday Auditory Experience

To investigate the auditory experience of background music in the everyday urban environment, our research team tried out and further developed a selection of methods. There were two goals: to gain more detailed insights into the sonic reality of urban everyday life concerning background music listening and to question the strict division between the customer and the service employee. We collated research material through various coordinated observation methods, incorporating listening walks, music recognition apps, instant messaging, mapping, field recording, and sound diaries: a collage of methods familiar to sensory ethnography and soundscape studies that we ended up calling the ‘AI-assisted Background Music Fieldwork Method’. While on the move, we were randomly inquired about our possible links with copyright organisations, meaning whether we were perhaps music license inspectors.

One data collection was conducted as a workshop of listening walks in Joensuu.Footnote ¹⁵ The collection was carried out by seven participants who walked a route of their own choice from the university campus to the city centre. The instructions were to visit spaces open to the public and to make observations of any music that might be playing. At the participants’ disposal were Shazam and SoundHound music recognition apps, used as a support in identifying the songs heard. During the walks, it became clear that for an identifiable sample, music must be loud enough to be transmitted to the application. Moreover, Shazam did not always identify the correct recording or artist. This is presumably due to either the fact that unreleased live recordings are not stored in the database used by the application, or the difficulty the music recognition algorithm runs into when attempting to distinguish the required signal from the blurred soundscape. All quotations in the following section are copied from the fieldwork notes (ACMEf/Joensuu).

When there was music in an establishment, an employee was asked about the source and the choice of music (‘Where does the music come from?’ ‘Who chooses the music?’). During three hours, the participants reported on fifty-three locations, thirty-two of which had background music playing. The participants sent location data for each visited establishment to a WhatsApp group. The data were used to draw up a map of the study sites (see Figure 4). The songs heard by participants were compiled into a public playlist on Spotify.Footnote ¹⁶ Music sources varied where background music was played:Footnote ¹⁷ laptops with integrated speakers, portable cassette players, televisions, stereos or tablets connected to external speakers, CD players, and portable radios. In larger spaces, speakers were embedded in the walls or ceilings. Fifteen sites played music from a radio station, fourteen had music playing from a tailored service, and three used their own CDs.

Figure 4

Downtown Joensuu. Dots show spaces with background music. Triangles mark spaces without background music.

The music played in Joensuu city centre shops was predominantly Anglo-American popular music sung by men. Half of the recordings heard had been released in the 2010s, and all of the music included vocals (there was no instrumental music). English was the language sung in twenty-six songs, Finnish in three, and Thai in one. Of the performers, nineteen were identifiable as men, six as women, and five performances had both genders audible. Eleven singers were from North America, fifteen from Europe (including four from Finland), and three from Asia. Eight performances could be categorised as rock, heavy, or funk; thirteen as pop; and nine as soul, R&B, or hip-hop. In terms of quantity, the dominance of Anglo-American popular music in commercial spaces became evident with the exception of a Thai grocery store playing Thai pop music (‘the choice of the lady of the house’), a case of vernacular cosmopolitanism of sorts (see Reference FeldFeld 2012). In twelve of the sites listened to, employees had no direct influence on the choice of music. In some sites, a background music service occasionally asked the staff for feedback on the playlists purchased from them. This was also the case in a shop that experimented with generative music mentioned earlier: the trial was interrupted after negative feedback from employees.

In her ethnographic study of IRCAM, the music anthropologist Georgina Born emphasised how the use of music technology is often presented as idealised, uncomplicated, and normative (Reference BornBorn 1995: 15). This conceptualisation is seldom solidly based in reality, which was evident in the case at hand. In two of the Joensuu study sites, faulty music equipment, radio reception, or the proximity of channels to the receiver were a headache (‘We have a really awkward radio, always playing on some random channel’). Because the channel would not stay tuned, the solution was ‘often to find any [channel] that stays on’. Everyday practices of using playback technology included learning, relearning, teaching others how to use the equipment, taking responsibility for its maintenance, or avoiding responsibility altogether. Many workers were unable or unwilling to say what the source of the music was: ‘I don’t know where it comes from, it comes from somewhere over there’; ‘The tapes come from somewhere ready-made, we don’t know, we don’t even hear (the music) here’ [makes a gesture with her hand from one ear in and out the other]. Nor do sales assistants and waiters ‘have time’ to pay attention to the matter while working. However, in general, the use of the music equipment was routine for many, with no music selection or adjustment of the equipment necessary (‘I just turn a knob’).

Our attention was drawn to the large number of places with no music and to the reasons for not playing music. Some sound systems were defunct and not repaired or replaced. Sometimes shopkeepers explained their mounted loudspeakers were unsuitably placed, causing their sound to be carried unnecessarily far from the shop premises. In some sites, playing music had been considered but deemed not important enough to warrant action (‘sometimes we wonder if there should be something’). There were also reports of preferred sources of sound present in the premises, such as a television; or of different sound zones within the shop, reminiscent of the adult novelty shop case – for example, that music was only listened to in the back of the shop and not in the customer areas. Others felt that music was completely unnecessary (‘there is none and there is no need’), while others justified the lack of music by the high cost of royalties (‘those Gramex royalties are terrible, I never even thought of [having music here]’).

8 Discussion

We have aimed to incite interest in and discussion on the ‘music that nobody listens to’ – the background music cultures that reveal both general and locally specific characteristics. This discussion concerns planning of urban areas, aesthetic design of acoustic spaces, the discourse of individual and collective well-being with music, and defining the urban sonic identity. It benefits from insight into the current trends of background music such as centralised music selection, digitalisation, the shift from background music to foreground music, and focusing on diverse target audiences. Discussion on background music extends to professional identities, aural diversity, musical breathing space, the transforming media environment (from hardware to software, from carriers to streams, from pseudo-scientific selection to algorithmic automation), and media content. The ample use of music experienced as familiar is key in understanding the long-lived critical discussions on the phenomenon of background music – generally understood as industry-led, behavioural, and global.

Issues on background music content such as selected or banned songs or artists raise questions about international industry standards, ideologies, and cultural values that may or may not be applicable in all cultural contexts. Questions of morality, ethics, and legislation need to be further critically assessed when background music programming processes are combined with analysis of data from other digital sources such as facial recognition for in situ music selection.

Although background music company personnel underline their agencies and competences in selecting music compilations for their clients, music is currently also identified and ordered by software algorithms on the basis of computational parameters, that is, ‘listened to’ by machines. This raises new questions about agency, listenership, and the supposed effects of background music. The parameters used in music selection processes are complex and extracted from the logic of capitalist accumulation (Reference ZuboffZuboff 2015). Anthropologist and software researcher Adrian Mackenzie notes (Reference Mackenzie2006: 5) that software has a secondary agency: it is not self-aware but is nevertheless capable of making relatively complex and autonomous decisions according to instructions it receives (see also Reference Kitchin and DodgeKitchin & Dodge 2011: 5). This is an agency handed over to the music selection algorithms, based on the cooperation between the user and the programme. In our view, the parameter-oriented machine listening is audible in some playlists studied during this project.

This frame of transferred agency opens up yet another perspective on the purpose and impact of music: what we understand the impact of music to be, who we expect music to affect, and how the music industry responds to this need or, alternatively, creates and sustains these needs. The discussion can be extended beyond the public sphere to listening in the private sphere and, somewhat surprisingly, to how music is assumed to affect living organisms other than human beings. The Spotify streaming service offers playlists of Western world mood music for pets and houseplants (‘Music for Cats’, ‘Calming Sounds for Dogs’; ‘Music for Plants’). Cats, dogs, and plants might or might not enjoy mood music, but as a strategy, keeping music streaming even when humans leave the house is a novel way to accumulate playback figures. Leaving the radio or TV on to keep pets company is an older urban habit, but here the argument for mood music is – again – presented as an affective need, in this setting for non-humans. The agency handed over to background music and the music’s supposed effects meet in a new way in the context of a digital revenue model. For the provider of the music, the question of building a new consumer segment is central, while the motives of the end user are subject to speculation. What is interesting from a research point of view, however, is that this anthropocentric view is increasingly believed to extend the impact of background music beyond the human experience.

Musically speaking, the dishearkened listener-consumer is catered to with a plethora of musical expressions. Although describing background music through genres is almost impossible (as noted earlier in Figure 1), it is nevertheless feasible to make some musical observations from the sonic material gathered during our project. Recurrent features in the material include a certain kind of flatness or uniformity in dynamics, tempo, and expression, combined with an instrumentation favourable to compression. Rather than inspecting each tune individually, its functionality as background music can be deduced from the musical similarity it has with the preceding tune and the one that follows it. In other words, it is dependent on the temporal proximity of other similar songs.

The concept of ‘functional music literacy’ we coined in the Introduction involves awareness and skills that are necessary tools for those interested in understanding music and sound in its social, cultural, and political contexts. The understanding we have set our sights on building combines historical awareness with the analysis of agencies (both human and non-human), spatial factors, and cultural conventions of the present.

The points we presented earlier as context-specific to Finland can be extrapolated to assist in planning culture-sensitive background music research as a sort of checklist – suggestions, methodological observations, and aspects for future research and understanding of urban sonic environments. We now remould them as questions for consideration when drafting a research plan for a background music culture.

1. (1) Infrastructural:

   • What developments in shopping and service consumption are characteristic to this culture?

   • How are shopping areas in and outside cities organised spatially, socially, and sonically?

   • Which public listening/broadcasting/sonic marketing practices are specific and/or historically significant to the culture in question (loudspeaker cars, mobile listening, loudspeaker broadcasts, sonic practices related to CCTV, etc.)?

   • What are the central developments concerning available technology, and how have they enabled music to be played/broadcast/reproduced?

2. (2) Societal and Economic:

   • Which laws, regulations, and social norms concern the use and role of music and the media?

   • Are there significant differences between insiders and outsiders (those who visit) in the culture when it comes to norms and everyday practices? For instance, is it advisable, appropriate, or even safe for tourists, women, persons with disabilities, or religious or sexual minorities to spend time in city spaces, and how does sound enter into the equation?

   • How much (if any) of the music-makers’ income derives from background music use? What are the positions and networks that exist for copyright organisations and unions for composers and musicians in the society?

   • Do service sector employees have agency – collaborative or individual – in the sonic design of their work environment?

3. (3) Cultural:

   • What musical characteristics (genres, artists, cultural/historical associations, language matters, etc.) are especially relevant to consumption and urban life in the culture at hand?

   • Are there special points of contact between the service culture and the sonic culture (e.g. the role of verbal vs. nonverbal communication in service encounters, the noise level viewed appropriate for customer comfort, etc.)?

   • How and why have certain sonic practices in public spaces been established? What normative thinking exists concerning noise in urban environments? Is mundane noise, such as annunciators or traffic sounds (honking, speeding, sirens), regulated? What are the attitudes towards unsought music in various contexts?

   • What kinds of agency is background music given and assumed to have? How are these assumptions and transfers of agency manifested?

   • In which ways is the diversity of hearing taken into consideration in urban spaces?

Research should not be restricted solely to sound or sonic environments, but encompass environments designed to stimulate the whole sensorium. Walking methods (sound walks, listening walks, sensory walks) have been important elements in soundscape research and sensory studies for half a century, and they are under continuous development (see e.g. Reference Drever, Bull and CobussenDrever 2020; Reference Järviluoma and MurrayJärviluoma & Murray 2023; Reference SmolickiSmolicki 2023). Commercial city spaces often contain zones of fluctuating reality (e.g. embarrassing product zones, or experience industry services such as escape rooms, day spas, etc.). These zones indicate a need for a holistic approach: they may be soundproof in the physical sense, but experientially, they are not isolated. Paying attention to the zoned essence of the public and semi-public urban spaces is very much a holistic endeavour. Not every transition from one zone to another is as distinct as, for example, the tricky step from street space to sex shop premises, but nearly all of them have consequences for the listener-consumer’s and the employees’ experiences. Thus, the transitions are most often thought out by someone planning the soundscape, and as such, they merit culturally sensitive scrutiny.