Supply house I’m currently on hold with is playing Gobbless The USA at extreme volume. I should sue.
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Hold music never really helps does it?
Like, i’ve never been like, “Oh, this song is soothing my frazzled nerves, I am no longer upset!”
Just have something completely anodyne play, softly, so I know I haven’t been disconnected
I don’t need a theme or anything popular, just use Girl from Ipanema
plus it all sounds like horrible mp3 compression with that gross shimmer
I wouldn’t be so upset if the song actually just played. It always play for like 3.4 seconds and then it goes “Remember you can go on our website” or “You are 81294th in line”
there’s an old “This American Life” episode about this guy who wrote the default hold music for Cisco phone systems.
he (Tim Carleton) wrote it as a 16 year old kid in 1989 and titled it “Opus #1” because he was as humble as any 16 year old composer.
later, a friend of his got a job at Cisco and programmed it in as the default hold music for one of the first phone systems, which went uncredited for 15+ years as it became the hold music for thousands of organizations.
it’s actually kinda lit as a jam tbh
I have been listening to that for three decades that I can think of, obviously longer and never knew where that song came from. I’m glad I know now. Thank you.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Hold music just makes it worse, frankly. I’m perfectly fine w being on hold the way it used to be back when landlines were abundant and the world was new - an intermittent beep to let me know I’m still connected and otherwise silence. Girl From Ipanema is perfectly fine and actually a rather nice song, let’s just roll w that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4uggI5hDGY oh yeah this is my jam
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Most of the places I get out on hold with (doctors, pharmacies, etc) just give me ads for their services in place of music.
Apple’s hold assist might actually be useful for something like this. Not sure if Android has similar but it’s a newer feature you can access from the menu on a phone call and it waits for you and turns off the sound until someone picks up. Not sure how perfect it is but this sounds like a great use case to test it out on.
