Are there elevators that play music inside?

There’s a type of music called elevator music. However out of all the elevators I’ve been in, I can’t remember being in one that had music playing inside.

I haven’t been in any elevators with music. I’m sure it’s just a film element to break awkward moments for comedic effect, like in Airplane II.

There used to be a service called Muzak that streamed really cheesy instrumental music to places like department stores, malls, hotel lobbies, elevators etc. It was psychologically engineered to slow down customers and encourage more patronage. I’ve heard it in a few hotel elevators, but not in a really long time. I think it’s largely faded from the practice of customer experience design, and it won’t be missed.

There is, however, an interesting genre/aesthetic called vaporwave that’s repossessing the sleaziest corporate schlock of the 80’s and 90’s (like elevator music) and making it cool.

Muzak is still around, in theory I guess. Mood Media bought them out a couple years ago. When we had to do fire alarm testing at the local shopping mall we had to test during business hours. Trying to coordinate a hundred stores to let us in a couple hours early wasn’t going to happen. In the same room with the fire alarm system was the Muzak system and amps for all the speakers in the mall common areas. We shut down all the amps but one, hooked up a 70V speaker, placed it a foot from the voice evac mic and keyed down the mic. That lasted a good hour and a half by the time we walked the entire mall and checked all the speakers. Some of the stores weren’t happy because we interrupted their hippy hoppity music with the boring stuff the mall pipes through (and imagine that music going through crappy quality fire alarm speakers). Worked though - and it was better then an evac signal the entire time. But the Muzak box worked off a satellite and you could select different genres, depending on what you wanted to play for the customers.

Seeing as this was at a mall, I guess the stripper music genre was out of the question. 8)

In one of Twoplyboy’s videos titled “Mirtone EVAC test tape,” they tested a cassette tape-based VECP using the demonstration tape. If I recall correctly, it didn’t have any evacuation tones; just a voice saying “This is a test,” along with some other stuff. I only mention this because it is similar to the test that Lambda did.

It’s too bad they don’t have those cassette-based VECPs anymore. It would be cool to play “Light My Fire” while testing the fire alarms!

I think in a few hotels, I have heard elevator music.

As for Muzak, or Mood Music now, My work (Red Lobster) has a Muzak system, in fact they all do. We have a contract with them, and have our own special satellite channel for our restaurants. It’s a pain in the ass when it rains though, as the music will cut in and out and the box controlling the music will beep continuously (which is annoying when it’s right above where you work).

a lot of panels have aux in to play whatever over the speakers. you could still pull it off if the panel was set up for it.