I followed up a story that was on yesterday's Today programme (no, I don't listen - someone told me!).
The Telegraph had a story that Mozart was favoured by 10% of local authorities for keeping callers on hold. But not, the presenter went on, in Lincolnshire, where the county council reported that the number of people hanging up halved when they replaced classical music with Easy Listening.
"That's why Radio 2 has more listeners than Radio 3, I expect," chuckled Evan.
But hang on a tick (no pun intended) ... go to the Telegraph story. It's certainly about Mozart, king of the ringtones &c. But there's nothing in that story about Lincolnshire CC, or replacing classical with easy listening. So feed in the relevant search terms and what do you find? A story in The Independent. It is roughly the same story but:
"The number of people who hang up while on hold has more than halved since Lincolnshire became one of a handful to have ditched classical "hold" music, jingles and recorded messages in favour of easy-listening chart songs, which require royalty payments to the Performing Rights Society (PRS).
[...]
"Mozart has also been heralded as the king of hold music for councils. A survey of around 120 councils showed more authorities selected the Austrian composer’s work over any other musician’s to keep taxpayers hanging on the telephone. "
So it isn't actually classical v. Easy Listening. It was jingles and recorded messages too, though it does suggest Easy Listening is popular (no surprise there then) rather than - as the Today item suggested - that classical music was unpopular. As a btw query re the Indy story - do classical recordings not incur Performing Rights fees? What about the performers?
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