I’m sometimes surprised at how often I hear 90’s New Age music, esp. produced by Narada, as hold music. I’ve heard tracks by David Lanz, Michael Gettel, Wayne Gratz, and Jeff Dana (who also did the theme song for Kung Fu: the Legend Continues) while being put on hold.
I don’t know what it says for my music tastes for me to hear hold music and then think, “I have that album!”
Nothing like a sh*tty flute cover to calm your nerves while you’re forced to sit there and wait! I think this would be a great one to listen to as well!
When I ran the IT department for a large community college the terrible hold music on our system drove me crazy. I commissioned a music composition class to write 1:00 to 3:00 minute instrumental pieces that we could use on the system. I paid each student who contributed $250 and it was some of the best money I’ve ever spent. We wound up with nine selections that would rotate through as people were put on hold.
In all honesty, I’ve forgotten what [RedactedCo] has for it’s hold ‘music’, but I do know that it’s not a stock package or anything; it’s something that the company paid to have created, so it’s more of an announcement than hold music.
Whoa. Sounds like some warped ass 1920s avant garde jazz.
On the very rare occasion I need tech support at Godaddy their on hold music is the best I’ve heard. They used to have some hip swing music, I believe it was Squirrel Nut Zippers, that was also way cool.
When they really don’t want to talk to you.
For decades I thought the on-hold music at USAA was the absolute worst, most annoying shit I ever heard - until recently, when they changed it! Now I sob silently, keening for the innocent salad days of yore. The new, far worse music features what sounds like a football team chanting “U-S-A-A!” every 16 bars. Kill me.
The funny thing is I was recently on hold at some local place and got the old USAA music! I was wistfully nostalgic, like a political torture prisoner recalling the relative pleasures of an abused childhood.
Worse than bad hold music, is bad hold music interspersed with abrupt silence or clicks. Like a Pavlovian dog, I grab my handset and take the call off speaker, only to have the whole scratchy, crappy music starting all over again.
[ Thanks Cigna Healthcare. FYI: At least once, clean the heads of that tape deck. PS: Tape deck!? ]
“Keep on rockin in the free … Thank you for holding. Did you know that you can log into your Evil Corp account using your smart phone with the free Evil Corp app available on ITunes and the Google Play Store? We will get to your call shortly. …near a garbage can…”
Remedy, 20 years ago. I occasionally had to call for tech support. I think they might’ve been owned by Peregrine Systems at that point. Their hold music was so bad I would do anything end everything I could to figure things out for myself just to avoid making that call. It got worse after the California energy deregulation and they had rolling blackouts, which meant no one could nor would answer the phone.
Wait, I know this one,
it’s the stalker song.
I think there is a post about it right here
on teh Boingz.
Some hold music sounds like crap due to all the audio compression rounds along the way. Not this one, which sounds like… this.
They should use this and they’re cowards if they don’t.
My first job out of college, the music on hold for our small office was provided by a boombox in the server/phone room tuned to the local soft-rock station. I recall the line-in was mono, so the cord was modified to use just one channel. You could also press a button on any desk set to listen to that music through the tinny speaker if you wished.
Anyway, one of the customer service guys wanted to listen to a World Series game during the work day, but the middle of the office had really poor radio reception. So he tuned the boombox to a local sports-talk AM station that was broadcasting the game, and listened through his desktop phone. And proceeded to forget about it once the game was over.
This went unnoticed, until a few weeks later when the company president was traveling, and called into the office. He was put on hold while transferred and promptly received an earful of shouty sports-radio idiocy.
I usually prefer ANY hold music to hearing a string of messages extolling the services of whatever entity I called.
Hands down the best hold music I ever heard was calling up an IT guy who worked for Goya foods.
The hold music was a series of 30 second songs, sung in peppy Spanish about how great Goya products were. These were well written little ditties in a variety of Latin styles with a brass orchestra. I heard at least a half dozen while on hold.
It was fantastic! A lot of effort for such a small thing. It made being on hold a pleasure.
I came here to mention USAA’s new(ish) hold music. I guess it’s meant to sound like one of those basic training chants? It’s bad. That said, I have had the best customer service experiences with USAA’s service reps. Uniformly upbeat and helpful.
Yeah the people are great. I’ve complained about the new music and they’re like “yeah, we’ve had a lot of that.”
I saw tv spot with the music. What was obviously written to be a 30 second jingle does NOT work as on-hold music, branding be damned
