{"id":1733,"date":"2022-02-01T07:45:22","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T07:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.replicant.ai\/the-surprising-roots-of-one-of-the-most-common-hold-music-songs\/"},"modified":"2023-05-09T21:19:37","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T21:19:37","slug":"the-surprising-roots-of-one-of-the-most-common-hold-music-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.replicant.com\/blog\/the-surprising-roots-of-one-of-the-most-common-hold-music-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surprising Roots of the Most Common Hold Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cisco is the number one supplier of enterprise phone systems in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Which means if you\u2019re ever placed on hold by a business, chances are you\u2019ll be listening to Cisco\u2019s stock hold music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You probably recognize it:<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pais41IW5dk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But what you probably don\u2019t know is the peculiar history of one of the most-played songs to ever grace the world\u2019s airwaves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was composed in 1989 by the duo of Tim Carleton and and Darrick Deel and recorded on a 4-track. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The former of the duo was a 16-year-old &#8220;Yanni-loving computer nerd, messing around with a drum machine and a synthesizer in his parents&#8217; garage in California,&#8221; according with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisamericanlife.org\/516\/stuck-in-the-middle\/act-one-3\">an interview<\/a> with him in 2014 on &#8220;This American Life.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The song went forgotten for almost a decade until some time in the &#8217;90s. A that time, <\/span>Deel, it turned out, had gone on to work for the then-startup Cisco.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While in the process of designing their initial phone systems, Deel offered the music to the team.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019ve got this piece of music that I know sounds really good on the phone,&#8221; he recalled saying in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/news\/local\/ciscos-suddenly-hot-hold-music\/1984756\/\">NBC Bay Area feature<\/a>. &#8220;Next thing I know it was going into the product.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u201cproduct\u201d turned out to be hundreds of millions of phones, all with the familiar jingle. The song went on to be known endearingly as &#8220;Opus No. 1.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In 2023, Anheuser-Busch&#8217;s featured the song in a Super Bowl commercial that had many people wondering, &#8220;why do I know this song?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/azCNwGnxq0s\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But what you probably don\u2019t know is the peculiar history of one of the most-played songs to ever grace the world\u2019s airwaves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The tale leads to some obvious questions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where is Carleton now?<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As of 2014, Tim Carleton was an IT professional in the Bay Area spending minimal time on music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Did he make any royalties off the track?<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cNot a penny. So I think that&#8217;s probably my most legit claim as a music artist. I didn&#8217;t make any money from my music,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why hasn&#8217;t the hold music ever been changed?<\/strong><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While IT admins who are so inclined can customize their system&#8217;s hold music, most don&#8217;t bother. And, as it turns out, the out-of-the-box music actually has a legion of fans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are hundreds of comments about the song on YouTube videos, parodies, and remixes. Though some people can&#8217;t stand it, most of the comments sing its praises:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;Best hold music ever made. I love this song.&#8217; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;So addictively pleasant. Please, put me back on hold so I can listen to it some more.&#8217; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;I work in a call center, and this music is the best to listen to after dealing with rude customers.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;I&#8217;ve been looking for this song for almost three years.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How does Carleton feel when he&#8217;s put on hold to his own music?<br \/>\n<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;It&#8217;s really embarrassing when you&#8217;re not expecting to hear that and then, all of a sudden, you have that memory pop up,&#8221; he said. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;I just start blushing immediately.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>But the most poignant answer given by either of the pair when prompted about Opus No. 1 came from Deel:<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you\u2019re frustrated with a company and you\u2019re on hold trying to get something fixed?&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;For me, that\u2019s not a pleasant experience regardless of the music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"om-ou5hbocxwkn476jzlkv0-holder\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cisco is the number one supplier of enterprise phone systems in the world. Which means&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":1734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.2 (Yoast SEO v21.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Surprising Roots of the Most Common Hold Music | Replicant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how you can eliminate hold music from your contact center entirely with Replicant&#039;s conversational AI solution.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.replicant.com\/blog\/the-surprising-roots-of-one-of-the-most-common-hold-music-songs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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