A few years ago I was in a chainstore and heard a piece of music that sounded so unlike any piece of music that I'd have expected to hear in such a place that I paid a bit more attention to it.
Normally I'm a bit NIMBYish about music in shops and restaurants and have often asked them to turn it down (or ideally off). I love live music but songs that are thoughtlessly piped into shops as audio wallpaper, particularly if they're a bit too loud, tend to make me shop elsewhere. I'm not alone in this NIMBYism and my mum used to be a member of Pipedown (I think Stephen Fry's a patron) - she had tinnitus and found having to contend with shit music didn't help the experience.
Anyway...
This music sounded a bit prog rock lite and while I might not rush out and buy it I was curious as to who had generated it, but the staff were acclimatised to the sound background and hadn't even noticed it.
Recently I was in another shop and heard it again - but nowadays I have Shazam to help me find out what a bit of music is and... it's Christian rock ;)
Band: Iona, Song: Matthew the Man, Album: The Book of Kells
aka "The Instrumental music that plays in lots of retail shops" - this video below explains what's going on rather nicely. There's a device called an Imagesound AHD1 which does the actual piping of the piped music via the internet. When the connection drops it defaults to playing its 'holdingstream' which includes the Iona song. If you just want to go straight to the song it's at 37s in or you can hear it from the Amazon link above.
If it says it's restricted because of EMI copyright then you click on the YouTube icon in the playing window you can watch this video from within YouTube on Cameron's RediffusionMusic channel (see comments below).
One mystery down... the internet is immensely useful for this sort of thing :)
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