The Horrors of Programmed Music

Reading the Sterne essay “Sounds Like the Mall of America” brought back some frightful memories of the summer before freshmen year when I worked as a teller at a bank. While I have no complaints of working steady hours in an air conditioned building with little to no actual labor involved, the one horror I can recall is the programmed music. As an employee, not a consumer, I was on the other side of the programmed music. This means I sat for 40 hours a week listening to the same two CDs of “approved music” that the bank sends the branches. This music was meant to amuse customers so they wouldn’t notice how long they were waiting in line. What this music didn’t do was spark any kind of life into the employees. I don’t know all the songs included, since I am not that involved in pop music, but I do know that I heard Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” at least 5 times a day. 5 times a day x 5 days a week x 12 weeks. That’s a lot of Kelly Clarkson. Sterne said “The music in question is not meant to be listened to, but to be heard.” Well I was in the unfortunate position that the music was not designed for, I had to listen to it.
I definitely agree with Sterne’s idea that this background/foreground music builds sound spaces for people, but it did it in a different way for me, in that it separated work mode from everything else not just in the way I dressed or acted or where I was, but literally in every sense with the music as well. I found it so constricting that the moment I left I had to listen to something I associated as intensely “me” on the drive home in order to shake this sense of programmed music that I had endured for eight hours.
Divesting from the reading for a bit, I want to say that programmed music is by no means a bad thing. I do it with every aspect of my life, though in a less “corporate” sense. Driving, walking to class, reading all feel awkward if I’m not simultaneously listening to music. Roadtrips are defined by the playlists more than the destinations, and I have in the past been late to class because I had to find my iPod first. So I understand the need for mundane life activities, such as banking or shopping, to be accompanied with music, but I feel this whole idea of “programmed” music in the corporate design sense only mutes these activities more by operating under the principles that one should not actually listen to the music, or that these are the best sounds to define any particular experience.