When there are too many books and blogs to read, too many movies to see, and--most importantly--too much music to listen to, a question of fundamental importance is "How do I find the good stuff--the writing and video and music--the content--that's going to be relevant and interesting to me?" A lot of smart people are grappling with this problem, and at least a few of them work at Muzak. And don't think "elevator music" when you hear that name--that's so 20th century. Think "audio branding."
As David Owen's article in the April 10th issue of The New Yorker makes clear, Muzak is doing some very advanced thinking about matching people--and companies, for that matter--with relevant content:
Last March, at a trade show in Las Vegas, Muzak demonstrated audio branding on a large scale. The company’s simple rectangular booth had a decorative theme for each of the show’s three days: a red rose, a Martini, and an eight ball from a pool table. Dana McKelvey had designed a soundtrack for each day that was meant to evoke the theme musically. While the songs played—Etta James and Diana Krall for the rose, Frank Sinatra and dZihan & Kamien for the Martini, Blondie and Wilson Pickett for the eight ball—audio architects interviewed visitors, and used their answers to come up with a “personal audio imaging profile” for each one; later, back in Fort Mill, the audio architects used those profiles to create personalized CDs.
I went through the same imaging process during my visit to Fort Mill. Steven Pilker, a twenty-five-year-old audio architect—he had worked in a record store while in school at U.N.C. Charlotte and, when he graduated, was offered a job by a Muzak executive who had been a regular customer—asked me seven or eight questions, none of which had anything to do with music. (“When you’re not working, what do you like to do?” “If you could choose an actor / actress to star in your biographical movie, who would it be and why?”) A couple of weeks later, he sent me a six-song program, which contained nothing connected to what I think of as my main musical phenotype (“classic rock”); in fact, five of the six tracks were by artists I’d never heard of. Yet I liked all six very much, and later bought CDs by two of them (Sufjan Stevens and Jamie Lidell). Pilker’s selections aren’t definitive, of course; another audio architect surely could have had another take on my “brand.” But I was struck that Pilker, after spending very little time with me, had created an appealing musical program that was based on his sense of who I was, rather than on any direct examination of the music I actually listened to if left on my own.
This is really one of the promises of attention: Aggregating our interests and preferences and applying the right algorithms to that data in such a way that we can find the good stuff (and avoid the crap) on the basis of what we pay attention to (and what we ignore). And it's not just (or even primarily) about efficiency--it's about discovery, it's about broadening our horizons, it's about a richer life.
(By the way, if you like the Owens piece, check out Barbara Hagenbaugh's USA Today article, which covered much the same ground 18 months ago. I do believe Owens owes Hagenbaugh a debt of gratitude, to say the least.)
