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Music on hold
Music on hold (MOH) or hold music is the business practice of playing recorded music to fill the silence that would be heard by telephone callers who have been placed on hold. It is especially common in situations involving customer service.
Music on hold was created by Alfred Levy, an inventor, factory owner, and entrepreneur. In 1962, Levy discovered a problem with the phone lines at his factory: a loose wire was touching a metal girder on the building. This made the building a giant receiver, so that the audio broadcast signal from a radio station next door would transmit through the loose wire, and could be heard when calls were put on hold. Levy patented his work in 1966. While other advancements have come to change and enhance the technology, it was this initial patent creation that began the evolution for today's music on hold.
Older MOH systems were integrated into telephone systems designed for businesses via an audio jack on the telephone equipment labeled "MOH".
Today, equipment that supports physical media usually plays CDs. Some older systems may still use cassette tapes (sometimes employing endless-loops), or reel-to-reel tape players. In each case, the unit loads the media into a digital memory chip to prevent premature wearing of the mechanical parts.
Equipment that supports virtual media generally plays MP3 files. Several types of units play these files. USB flash drive units allow an MP3 file to be received electronically, downloaded to a flash drive and connected to the player. Ethernet based remote load units connect via the network to a remote IP address. Phone line based remote load systems allow for a connection via an analog telephone line and dialing the number belonging to the unit. For VoIP phone systems, MP3s are loaded without any equipment.
Newer technology allows MP3 files to be downloaded automatically from the internet so that messages (or interesting content in the form of news and weather, among many) can be changed daily. The new "online on hold" technology makes the older technology redundant since it requires no additional hardware. All these systems allow analog-to-digital audio storage and playback.
As of 2011[update], technology allows productions to be downloaded or streamed via the Internet, or played through a USB flash drive.
Modern wireless telephony relies on lossy audio codecs optimized for spoken voice transmissions, which dramatically reduces the necessary bandwidth at the expense of making any non-spoken content, such as music on hold, sound distorted.
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Music on hold AI simulator
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Music on hold
Music on hold (MOH) or hold music is the business practice of playing recorded music to fill the silence that would be heard by telephone callers who have been placed on hold. It is especially common in situations involving customer service.
Music on hold was created by Alfred Levy, an inventor, factory owner, and entrepreneur. In 1962, Levy discovered a problem with the phone lines at his factory: a loose wire was touching a metal girder on the building. This made the building a giant receiver, so that the audio broadcast signal from a radio station next door would transmit through the loose wire, and could be heard when calls were put on hold. Levy patented his work in 1966. While other advancements have come to change and enhance the technology, it was this initial patent creation that began the evolution for today's music on hold.
Older MOH systems were integrated into telephone systems designed for businesses via an audio jack on the telephone equipment labeled "MOH".
Today, equipment that supports physical media usually plays CDs. Some older systems may still use cassette tapes (sometimes employing endless-loops), or reel-to-reel tape players. In each case, the unit loads the media into a digital memory chip to prevent premature wearing of the mechanical parts.
Equipment that supports virtual media generally plays MP3 files. Several types of units play these files. USB flash drive units allow an MP3 file to be received electronically, downloaded to a flash drive and connected to the player. Ethernet based remote load units connect via the network to a remote IP address. Phone line based remote load systems allow for a connection via an analog telephone line and dialing the number belonging to the unit. For VoIP phone systems, MP3s are loaded without any equipment.
Newer technology allows MP3 files to be downloaded automatically from the internet so that messages (or interesting content in the form of news and weather, among many) can be changed daily. The new "online on hold" technology makes the older technology redundant since it requires no additional hardware. All these systems allow analog-to-digital audio storage and playback.
As of 2011[update], technology allows productions to be downloaded or streamed via the Internet, or played through a USB flash drive.
Modern wireless telephony relies on lossy audio codecs optimized for spoken voice transmissions, which dramatically reduces the necessary bandwidth at the expense of making any non-spoken content, such as music on hold, sound distorted.