WORST HOLD MUSIC EVER

(Unless there is actually some phone number that uses the Moog Cookbook's "Hotel California" as hold music)

"Hold On" by Wilson Philips!!

And this is bad why?

I heard that in a supermarket once. I swear I wasn't crazy.

Bagpipes version of "Amazing Grace", courtesy of CLEAR CHANNEL.

Aylesbury Vale District Council has a nice jaunty little number that sounds like a kids' tv theme tune. My friend tells me it's a Paul Weller song. It always used to cheer me up, probably more than the Paul Weller version would.

I loved the uptempo instrumental version of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" with XYLOPHONESand a SOAP OPERA ORGAN.

I love the hold music the Simpsons always pull for laughs, like when Homer is being attacked by the Krusty doll so he calls the Krusty toy hotline and gets "Everybody loves a clown, so why dont you?".

time warner goes back and forth between classical and weird jazzy spacey stuff.

I love the hold music the Simpsons always pull for laughs, like when Homer is being attacked by the Krusty doll so he calls the Krusty toy hotline and gets "Everybody loves a clown, so why dont you?".

Homer loses Maggie; cue "Baby Come Back"

Bell Canada's hold music is this one little motif, maybe 16 seconds long, played over and over. and it's always crackly for some reason so it sound like william basinski.

ack back on hold... hmmm this is also like, a weird looping 8 bar pattern that almost sounds minimalist but not quite.

i am agreeing to all sorts of weird stuff i don't understand because this woman's accent is really weird.

@)#(IOEJFKML

I love the hold music the Simpsons always pull for laughs, like when Homer is being attacked by the Krusty doll so he calls the Krusty toy hotline and gets "Everybody loves a clown, so why dont you?".

haha, yes. was thinking of this exactly when i saw this thread

this

vaguely granada tv 1993 feel to it

oh god fretless bass now

rly disappointed in blur for allowing british gas to use an endless loop of the universal for their hold music -- I'm starting to associate that song with incompetence and irritation

back in late nineties, working at a bank call centre, our hold music came from an actual cassette player that just went on continously, eventually wearing out the tapes and going all slow and wonky. for a while i think it was playing whalesongs or some other nature crap, and we couldn't hear it ourselves, but found out that it had degraded when people started to come out of hold sort of freaked out, thinking they'd been hearing demonic messages, etc.. that was probably the best hold music ever though.

Check out the automated message that plays every 10 minutes while on hold with the Illinois Dept of Healthcare and Family Services. (I'm up to an hour and 50 minutes on hold now, a new personal record) pic.twitter.com/npQEo6FMcm

— Zach Scott (@weinventyou) August 27, 2018

I'm on hold listening to the most distorted music ever, like a toy piano being played through a completely blown speaker.

They weren't able to replace their PA system yet, and that kid is playing live from 8 -6, cut him some slack

lol. Figuring the average on hold time is about 30 minutes, could they not have a longer piece of music than this endlessly repeating 60 second loop?

"Your call is very important to us. Did you know you can perform transactions online? Yes, that's right, so hang up and leave us alone. The music's only going to get shittier, you've been warned."

I wonder who even picks this shit

And what technology are they using that sounds so bad? 1970s KMart cassette muzak is way clearer.

It's funny how much of an afterthought it is to companies until it pisses someone off.

About 12 years ago, one of my jobs was listening to and summarizing escalated calls, and I got an unusual one where the customer complained that our hold music contained religious Christmas music, and they were upset about the lack of inclusiveness.

I had to listen to the entirety of the hold music to determine if any Christmas music was played. It was like a 15 minute hold and after minute 14 I was like "ok guess this guy's full of s-" and suddenly, a Christmas melody appeared, something like Good King Wenceslas, for about 30 seconds.

It was like a dynamic recording that didn't repeat, it was like hours of ambient music, and this was the only time the music appeared.

So once I replied to say his complaint was verified, nobody had any idea who was responsible for the hold music used and thus couldn't change it.

Good King Wenceslaus not really religious though. Fun fact: The Oxford Book of Carols calls the lyrics “doggerel”.

I think hold music would be better replaced by nature sounds or maybe someone reciting pi

At an old job, they replaced the phone equipment, and the technician hooked up a boom box with a CD of the Batman Forever soundtrack on repeat for hold music. After a few months we discovered that the whole CD wasn't repeating, just "Kiss from a Rose."

was that a REALLY old job, or did you want the callers to have a cool bit of nostalgia for softer batdays

Mid-90s

I love home baked tech solutions sometimes

maybe someone reciting pi

Here we go: https://soundcloud.com/chris-piuma/ned-raggett

it's just what the doctor ordered

I’m on hold with Morgan Stanley and the robot voice just informed me that the cheesy piano hold music is composed by their employees

are their employees AI

Man, Ryder delivery straight ripping off freebird

The cat's vet uses a loop of two brief pieces of hold music, one quiet and the other VERY LOUD, presumably to keep the caller on their toes for whenever the receptionist returns to the line.