Muzak

Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments owned by Mood Media.

The name Muzak, a blend of music and the popular camera brand name Kodak, has been in use since 1934 and has been owned by various companies. The word Muzak has been a registered trademark of Muzak LLC since December 21, 1954.

In 1981, Westinghouse bought the company and ran it until selling it to the Fields Company of Chicago, publishers of the Chicago Sun-Times, on September 8, 1986. Muzak was based in various Seattle, Washington, locations from 1986 to 1999, after which it moved its headquarters to outside Charlotte in 2000. Formerly owned by Muzak Holdings, the brand was purchased in 2011 by Mood Media in a deal worth US$345 million.

In the United States, due in part to the market dominance of Muzak Holdings, Muzak came to be used to refer to most forms of background music, regardless of source. The term is also commonly used in English vernacular as a pejorative for music considered bland and insubstantial. This makes Muzak an example of a genericized trademark. Muzak may also be referred to as "elevator music" or "lift music" (see also Music on hold). Though Muzak Holdings was for many years the best-known supplier of background music, and is commonly associated with elevator music, the company itself did not supply music to elevators.

Inventor George Owen Squier, credited with inventing telephone carrier multiplexing in 1910, developed the original technical basis for Muzak. He was granted several US patents in the 1920s related to transmission of information signals, among them U.S. patent 1,641,608 a system for the transmission and distribution of signals over electrical lines.

Squier recognized the potential for this technology to be used to deliver music to listeners without the use of radio, which at the time was in early state and required fussy and expensive equipment. Early successful tests were performed, delivering music to customers on New York's Staten Island via their electrical wires.

In 1922, the rights to Squier's patents were acquired by the North American Company utility conglomerate, which created the firm Wired Radio, Inc. to deliver music to their customers, charging them for music on their electric bill. By the 1930s radio had made great advances, and households began listening to broadcasts received via the airwaves for free, supported by advertising.

Squier remained involved in the project, but as the home market became eclipsed by radio in 1934 he changed the company's focus to delivering music to commercial clients. Intrigued by the made-up word Kodak used as a trademark, he combined it with "music" to create the word Muzak, which became the company's new name.