Let's ask ILE wht it thinks of music flooding

I think there's something to it.

http://www.oriononline.org/images/oo/millennium/Fran-Still-2.jpg

When I am in any of the above-mentioned places I am not there to hear music. I am there for whatever reason is appropriate to the respective place. I am no more interested in hearing "Mack the Knife" while waiting for the shuttle to Boston than someone sitting ringside at the Sands Hotel is interested in being forced to choose between sixteen varieties of cottage cheese. If God had meant for everything to happen at once, he would not have invented desk calendars.

from "The Sound of Music: Enough Already," in Metropolitan Life (New York: Dutton, 1978)

In summary, Manos.

I think Momus' comment goes well above and beyond concern about noise or music's ubiquity in public spaces: it stretches to a distaste of its availability and legibility to all, even those who listen to music in ways that don't necessarily impinge on others (like in cars, in headphones, at home).

Aldous Huxley had almost exactly the same thoughts about light w/r/t it's wide availability in the modern age tarnishing it's power to be sacred, mysterious, otherworldly, intimate, moving, extraordinary.

upspeak, or uptalk, is when you end a non-interrogative sentence with rising intonation, not increased volume. uptalk isn't louder, it's a prosodic variation.

linguists call this type of speech "upownass"

From what I know of acoustics, one sound can overcome the masking qualities of another by altering the first sound's constituent frequencies but not its volume -- though obviously an increase in volume usually does do the job.

i do remember reading that uptalk suggests that you aren't finished speaking yet, providing a deterrent to being interrupted.

what attali said.

That's a good thing, then?? yes??

I LOVE listening to music, at certain selected times and places. I dislike being subjected to the musical choices of others to the extent with which I am. How long can you spend in a shopping centre without hearing James Blunt?? Do you actually want to travel to work, which is bad enough as it is, and listen to Beverly-I-must-have-a-fucking-good-PR-because-I-constantly-get-on-the-news-when -I-release-something-despite-having-done-nothing-of-any-merit-Knight?

Well, you're in luck. Its a shame for the rest of us.

-- youn (youn01...), April 1st, 2006.

An orange, in a bowl

Sometimes people wipe their noses.

-- Michael Daddino (epicharmu...), April 1st, 2006.

Music always was public and shared. Technology and the arbitrary division of everyday life are the only things that might have temporarily taken music out of certain spheres. This whole thing is stupid; worst momus straw dog I've seen in a long time. The modern caricaturistic idea of music is ridiculous, limited, constipated, r***ist.

-- Dan I. (w1nt3rmut...), April 2nd, 2006.

Which one of these statements is correct, btw?

But that's what my iPod is for! So I can listen to my own music in those situations.

Of course, then I can't listen to conversations, overhear exciting news, form new friendships, respond to cries for help, hear when someone tells me I have poo on my shoe, and so on.

And to that I say: good.

The problem is that your personal music player reduces your ability to tune out unwanted noise. Back in The Past, I could quite happily sit on the bus and read my book, blocking out all conversations around me by sheer force of will alone. Nowadays, if I don't have my headphones on, I am distracted by every stupid noise around me and can't read at all.

And, long term, reduces your ability to hear at all. Although that doesn't stop me listening to mine.

That's a good thing, then?? yes??

Arrgh. To repeat: Momus ISN'T JUST complaining about music's audibility everywhere you go, or its ad-like ubiquity in the public sphere. His discomfort extends to YOU and ME (and if he possesses a conscience or a taste for consistency, himself as well) as we listen to music at home in complete privacy -- the whole history of music, free and unencumbered from the circumstances that, in the past, would've rendered much of it inaccessible to us but would've contributed to its holy shaman aura.

I put the first in quotes to indicate this was not my own belief, btw.

Actually, I can see where you're coming from having re-read the intro. I think I interpreted what he said to fit in with what I thought. Which probably makes you RIGHT.

Although the assertion that the consumption of music is somewhat more democratic (and there's a whole debate there about whether music should be consumed) doesn't affect the dynamics of distribution and production which (interweb sharing aside) are becoming increasingly elitist.

I know it took a while.

Sometimes I've got music on while I'm doing something round the house and I hardly hear it, I'm engaged elsewhere, but then some detail hits my brain and I'll listen intently again. There are degrees.

So if everybody has access to knowledge, does knowledge become meaningless? If everybody has access to food, does food lose its flavour? Who wants to get a Scrooge McDuck-like pleasure from hoarding their treasure and poring over it in a locked room? Whatever's good or important about music has got nothing to do with how high a mountain you had to climb to hear it. That's a different kind of pleasure altogether: trainspotting, or oneupmanship, or somethink.

That said, the democratization & backgroundification of music (and I do admit I am using "aristocratic" and "democratic" veeery loosely here) have gone hand in hand, and maybe the latter is a sad but inevitable consequence of the former.

Actually I'm not completely anti-background (there's a time and place, etc. but I am something of a Muzak fan, in fact) and find it curious that the British are far and away much more passionate about this subject than Americans are -- I just can't believe the situation is that much worse there than here; perhaps a connection can be made to the fact that Muzak in the workplace was never as popular in America as it was in Europe, for whatever reason.

wow. my (untrustworthy) memories of being a US kid in the 60s feature Muzak as an ubiquitous soundtrack: at the dr's office, grocery store, shopping centers, and so on.

I'm surmising that having to deal with Muzak in the workplace (where you can't escape from it) might lower a person's tolerance level for it elsewhere; more use of Muzak in European workplace --> bigger anti-Muzak backlash in UK than US. (But why was Muzak in the workplace used more in Europe than America in the first place?)