In the early 1900s, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. George Squier invented a system that allowed the transmission of multiple radio signals along the outside of electrical and telephone lines. In 1922, Wired Radio was created to develop Squier’s idea of delivering programming directly to homes and businesses using wires, and in 1934, the company changed its name to Muzak.
Squier’s first real breakthrough came when he introduced elevator music to soothe the nerves of high-rise elevator passengers. The company took music out of the background and into the foreground in the mid 1980s when it entered into an agreement with Yesco to introduce “Foreground Music One” and cassette delivery.
Today, Muzak’s client base is a mixture of national and local clients, from local pizza shops to hospitals. Muzak’s tunes can be heard in nearly any business that depends upon shoppers coming into a location and spending time in a retail environment. The company also counts among its clients about 80,000 marketing-on-hold customers and 320,000 music customers, of which 250,000 are served via satellite. Muzak also offers about 80 different “zero DJ talk, zero commercial, zero liners” music programs as well as custom programming for a number of clients.
Muzak’s first usage of satellite was to backhaul the content over C-band, then turn it around over to SCA, sub-carrier signals. In the late 1980s, Muzak went up on direct broadcast satellite using 1-meter dishes to deliver the content directly to the clients’ locations.
Muzak’s Chief Technology Officer David Moore shared with Satellite Business Solutions Managing Editor Julie Samuel what satellite delivery means for Muzak today.

PROBLEM: Delivering Flexible Music Programming At The Best Price Point

One of the capabilities that Muzak’s customers desire is the ability to control the programing from their individual sites. Muzak’s Web-controlled satellite music management system enables the client to log on to the Internet and instantly change the music or control their in-store messages. The commands are received into Muzak’s Network Operations Center via the Internet and automatically routed to the proper music receiver via the 7/24 satellite control stream allowing content changes to occur instantaneously at the client’s location.
On the price side, Muzak found that the long-term economics of satellite were very favorable to its business. “The more sites we have on satellite, the more our cost to deliver to each location goes down. Whereas with broadband and disc, your cost of delivery stays constant for every location that you add. Satellite gives you maximum coverage and declining cost per site per delivery. That’s why Muzak decided to go this route,” says Moore.

SOLUTION: “Satellite Wins”

Today, Muzak still works with its first partners in satellite delivery: Wegener Communications, which provides the receivers, and Microspace, which provides uplink and broadcast services.
In terms of reliability, Muzak provides a hands-free solution, including some onboard flash to completely eliminate the risk of loss of music at the client location in case of rain fade. “Outside of that, the reliability of satellite is pretty much proven,” says Moore.
The company offers both broadband and satellite delivery depending on the customer’s needs. “It’s amazing how many times at the end of the day, when we have a satellite proposal on the table and a broadband proposal on the table, satellite wins. We believe that in the near future at least satellite is the preferred delivery service and will outpace broadband,” says Moore.
When comparing licensing fees for both solutions, Moore adds, “We are saving millions of dollars a year by using satellite rather than broadband or on-premise delivery,“ which results in a better price point for customers.