Appropriate Music for Callers 'On Hold'? 339
RiBread asks: "I work at a startup, and as such wear many hats. Right now I'm trying to make sure our phone system is useful. One of everyone's biggest complaints is the cheesy music that plays when someone calls in and is put on hold. The stunning MIDI rendition of 'Home on the Range' they hear vies only with the ice cream truck and 'It's a Small World' for its ability to infuriate. I found out we can hook up a CD player to the phone system to alleviate this, but the real question is now: what do we want to play? What's the best 'on hold' music you've heard?
(comments with links to samples of music will be most appreciated)"
Classical music is good (Score:5, Informative)
Give them a choice! (Score:1, Informative)
Having looked into this once for my company, you should know that you probably need an ASCAP licence to be legal. Most people don't bother, though.
My company does business in many languages, and our phone system only supports one source of hold music, so they have to choose instrumental-only music so that callers don't get lyrics in a language they don't know...
Re:If you can use a CD Player... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Classical music is good (Score:3, Informative)
You can't even play a radio (where fees are already paid by the radio station for each song) in the waiting room without a license. If you have a radio playing at your desk, or in a workshop, that's ok - as long as no customers can hear it.
They have some stupid rules.
Re:Classical music is good (Score:5, Informative)
BMI Records on Music On Hold [bmi.com]
Although, most people buy tapes and CDs thinking they are now their property, there is a distinction in the law between owning a copy of the CD and owning the songs on the CD. There is also a difference between a private performance of copyrighted music and a public performance. Most people recognize that purchasing a CD doesn't give them the right to make copies of it to give or sell to others. The record company and music publishers retain those rights. Similarly, the music on the CDs and tapes still belongs to the songwriter, composer or music publisher of the work. When you buy a tape or CD the purchase price covers only your private listening use, similar to the "home" use of "home" videos. Once you decide to play these tapes or CDs in your business, it becomes a public performance.
Songwriters, composers, and music publishers have the exclusive right of public performance of their musical works under the U.S. copyright law. Therefore, any public performance requires permission from the copyright owner - or BMI - if it is BMI-affiliated music. With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you can publicly perform all BMI-affiliated music.
Re:ETA (Score:4, Informative)
If you haven't heard of it check out the Asterisk PBX [asterisk.org]. It's GPL licensed and comes with ETA announcements built in
It supports VoIP (SIP protocol among others) and Analog phones, T1's, etc.
Check out the 2 port SIPura ATA [atacomm.com] to interface with 2 FXS ports which allow you to interface with normal Analog phones, or the
SIPura 3000 [atacomm.com] with two FXS ports and one FXO port which allows you to interface with a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the telco.
Stop by and say hello in #asterisk on the irc.freenode.org IRC network (Sorry you've gotta register your nick with nickserv to get in...we've had huge problems with spambots
Hopefully these spambots will go away eventually.
Re:Why specifically Music? (Score:2, Informative)
best yet... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:morse code (Score:2, Informative)
Don't use live radio (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Variety (Score:2, Informative)
If that message never changes, yeah, but I once dealt with a company that would break with "you are now Nth in line". Depending on N and how quickly it changed, I knew whether it was worth it to hang on or just leave a message.
Re:Classical music is good (Score:3, Informative)
Here [bookweb.org] is a well-written article about licensing by BMI, ASCAP, etc.
Believe it or not, there are already exemptions in place for small business who simply play the radio in the background.
Re:Britney Spears (Score:3, Informative)
The best that you can do is shoot for no wait for a certain percentage of the time (usually between 70-99%). Because it is possible every customer might call at exactly the same time (but it is extremely unlikely), you have to have one rep for each customer. This is an extreme example, but this is the sort of thing that you have do deal with in probabilities.
75% no-wait service is cheap.
90% no-wait service is a little more expensive
95% no-wait service is VERY expensive
99% no-wait service will bankrupt even Microsoft (even if they were capable of solving your problem)