Amid the many claims and counter-claims made about piped music (also called muzak, canned music or elevator music), objectively researched facts about piped music’s effects and its real popularity can be very hard to find.

This page presents the facts about people’s real attitudes to piped music in public places and its effects on human health.

• You can download a factsheet by clicking the link in the right-hand column - why not print it out for distribution or email it to your friends?
  

Contrary to what is often believed, objectors to piped music in public places outnumber those who like it.

• On 6th November 2011 Petrie Hosken on LBC 97.3 Radio did an hour-long programme about piped music following up a recent survey that
  found at least 50% of people would walk out of shops with it. Sarah Cawley from the British Retail Consortium, which pushes piped music, tried to ridicule such reactions as being those of just a few absurdly  ‘sensitive’ folk, as might be expected. But the emails that Petrie Hosken read out generally supported the survey’s findings. One person said she did not mind piped music in principle but agreed it was too loud, two people liked it, but at least 20 other emails were read out that supported the survey’s stance. Petrie indicated that there were many more similarly supportive text messages and e-mails. Yet again, the smooth-talking purveyors of piped music have been shown to be strangers to the truth.
• A survey in 2007 carried out by the UK Noise Association to gauge the reactions of people working in shops to the piped music often played there, found that 40% said they disliked it, 28% tried to ignore it, only 7% said they actually liked it. (PIpedown is pushing for legislation to protect people working in such muzac-polluted environments, as well as patients in hospitals.)
• In February 2005 piped television was introduced on some c2c trains in Essex. Passengers hated it so much that they barricaded themselves in the lavatories in protest. According to a poll then carried out by the BBC, 67% of commuters disliked this intrusion  on their  privacy. Piped television  was soon abandoned.
• In January 1997 a poll for The Sunday Times asked people what was ‘the single thing they most detested about modern life’. Third in the list of hated things came piped music, with 17% citing it. (The first two most hated things were other forms of noise).
• In April 1994 Gatwick Airport Management carried out a survey of travellers’ attitudes to the piped music then being played in the airport. Of the 68,077 who replied, 43% said they disliked the piped music, only 34% said they liked it, the remainder had no opinion. (Gatwick Airport has since discontinued its piped music). This is the largest impartial survey ever carried out.

• All unwanted noise raises the blood pressure and depresses the immune system, increasing levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol. Such a combination increases the sufferers chances of heart attacks or strokes.
  
• A survey of 115 blood donors at Nottingham University Medical School in January 1995 found that playing piped music made donors more nervous before giving blood and more depressed afterwards than silence.
• The NOP poll of 1998 found that among people with hearing problems (14% of the population), 86% hated piped music. The Royal National Institute of the Deaf now backs the campaign against piped music.
• Blind people (who rely on background sounds to help find their around) also find piped music upsetting.
• Sufferers from illnesses such as Meniere's Disease and even epilepsy can find that loud piped music can trigger attacks, especially if it is unexpected and inescapable. 
  

Please sign the petition against unwanted nonstop television and music in hospitals, which should be places of quiet recuperation.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/against-forced-music-in-hospitals.html