Time to pull the plug on piped music
What do Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Prunella Scales, Lesley Garrett, Julian Lloyd Webber and Simon Rattle have in common? They all hate piped music and all support Pipedown, the campaign for freedom from piped music.
They’re not alone in detesting this acoustic pollution. Millions of people hate such music, which can often be inescapable. Go into a hotel and piped music will be flooding the lobby; it fills the restaurants; it is played in lifts – one of its names is ‘elevator music’ – and in corridors; it is even tinkling away in the lavatories.
Hellishly ubiquitous, it goes on forever, unlike live music whose players pause for breath or for drinks, and which is seldom relayed far. (‘Piped music’ does not refer to a type of music but to any music piped or relayed around a room or building where people go for reasons other than listening to it.) The same unwanted music fills shops, restaurants, pubs, even parks.
And if you protest, you can be made to feel a tone-deaf killjoy in a minority of one. ‘You are the only person to complain,’ is a common response. It is also rubbish. Impartial opinion polls show that those who loathe piped music outnumber those who like it. But often people do not like to complain and slip away quietly.
People who notice it with real pain include that large minority – one in six – with hearing problems. They find it impossible to hear conversations against piped music.
Musicians find it a pain in the ear because they invariably listen to music, while music teachers hate it because it is hard to get students sated with non-stop music to listen properly at all. And for people lying immobilised in hospitals, piped music or television can be torture.
‘What I dread is not the mechanical or chemical parts of treatment, it is the music and TV soundtracks. Heaven please hear me and let my end come without piped music,’ wrote one Pipedown member after his experience in hospital.
Pipedown is now pressing for legislation, probably via a Private Members’ Bill, to ban piped music in hospitals. We have twice almost succeeded in getting a bill into the Commons. Third time lucky…
Pipedown was started light-heartedly and we always suggest courtesy when protesting. Abuse, no matter how provoked, is counter-productive. The facts are on our side, despite the bogus reports of one or two academics who just happen to be funded by the piped music industry. (This, incidentally, is a large one, with a turnover of £100m in the UK.) The harm all noise inflicts – raised blood pressure and depressed immune system, for example – is well established.
We have had many successes: from persuading Gatwick Airport to remove piped music from public areas to dissuading Tesco from installing it (except at Christmas, where Jingle Bells can drive shoppers and staff mad). We have pressed Waterstones to remove its piped music – slowly but surely it is going. And we are fighting Marks & Spencer, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, persists in playing it, thus driving away customers. (John Lewis/Waitrose flourishes without piped music. So does Lidl.)
And so if you don’t want a world in which every corner is filled with nonstop piped music, join the fight.
Nigel Rodgers is the National Secretary of the Pipedown campaign.
Subscription to Pipedown is £15 per annum. Members receive five different sorts of cards, four types of sticker and quarterly newsletters. Write to 1 The Row, Berwick St James, Salisbury SP3 4TP, or visit www.pipedown.info/
They’re not alone in detesting this acoustic pollution. Millions of people hate such music, which can often be inescapable. Go into a hotel and piped music will be flooding the lobby; it fills the restaurants; it is played in lifts – one of its names is ‘elevator music’ – and in corridors; it is even tinkling away in the lavatories.
Hellishly ubiquitous, it goes on forever, unlike live music whose players pause for breath or for drinks, and which is seldom relayed far. (‘Piped music’ does not refer to a type of music but to any music piped or relayed around a room or building where people go for reasons other than listening to it.) The same unwanted music fills shops, restaurants, pubs, even parks.
And if you protest, you can be made to feel a tone-deaf killjoy in a minority of one. ‘You are the only person to complain,’ is a common response. It is also rubbish. Impartial opinion polls show that those who loathe piped music outnumber those who like it. But often people do not like to complain and slip away quietly.
People who notice it with real pain include that large minority – one in six – with hearing problems. They find it impossible to hear conversations against piped music.
Musicians find it a pain in the ear because they invariably listen to music, while music teachers hate it because it is hard to get students sated with non-stop music to listen properly at all. And for people lying immobilised in hospitals, piped music or television can be torture.
‘What I dread is not the mechanical or chemical parts of treatment, it is the music and TV soundtracks. Heaven please hear me and let my end come without piped music,’ wrote one Pipedown member after his experience in hospital.
Pipedown is now pressing for legislation, probably via a Private Members’ Bill, to ban piped music in hospitals. We have twice almost succeeded in getting a bill into the Commons. Third time lucky…
Pipedown was started light-heartedly and we always suggest courtesy when protesting. Abuse, no matter how provoked, is counter-productive. The facts are on our side, despite the bogus reports of one or two academics who just happen to be funded by the piped music industry. (This, incidentally, is a large one, with a turnover of £100m in the UK.) The harm all noise inflicts – raised blood pressure and depressed immune system, for example – is well established.
We have had many successes: from persuading Gatwick Airport to remove piped music from public areas to dissuading Tesco from installing it (except at Christmas, where Jingle Bells can drive shoppers and staff mad). We have pressed Waterstones to remove its piped music – slowly but surely it is going. And we are fighting Marks & Spencer, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, persists in playing it, thus driving away customers. (John Lewis/Waitrose flourishes without piped music. So does Lidl.)
And so if you don’t want a world in which every corner is filled with nonstop piped music, join the fight.
Nigel Rodgers is the National Secretary of the Pipedown campaign.
Subscription to Pipedown is £15 per annum. Members receive five different sorts of cards, four types of sticker and quarterly newsletters. Write to 1 The Row, Berwick St James, Salisbury SP3 4TP, or visit www.pipedown.info/