Muzak Music

Tycoons in Manhattan were last week offered for the first time a luxury already enjoyed in about one of every seven homes in Holland. The select list who followed the example of 340,000 Dutchmen already included Harrison Williams of North American Co., Walter Gifford of American Telephone & Telegraph, John A. Hartford of A. & P., Motorman Walter P. Chrysler. Oilman J. Paul Getty. For a fee of $50 a month these notables contracted to have the best of the world's music on tap in their homes (without aid of radio or phonograph) just as they have hot water or electricity. This music will come over telephone lines by a special process of Muzak Corp., a little-known company headed by a famed figure of "new era" finance--Waddill Catchings.

In August 1929 Waddill Catchings was rated a brilliant economist and success, the former because of his co-authorship of The Road to Plenty, which predicted a perpetual upward spiral of prices & profits, the latter because as the self-made head of Goldman, Sachs Trading Corp.., he was a millionaire many times over and the floater of Wall Street's two most spectacular investment trusts, Shenandoah and Blue Ridge. When they collapsed with Depression, Waddill Catchings, by then a director of 29 corporations, left Goldman, Sachs, has since been associated with Millionaire Harrison Williams whose North American Co. with $900,000.000 assets is one of the biggest utility holding companies in the U. S. Muzak Corp. is owned by Wired Radio, Inc., which is a subsidiary of North American, run largely in hope of increasing the use and uses of electricity. Waddill Catchings has been in charge of Muzak Corp. since it went into operation three years ago.

Wired Radio, Inc., out of which Muzak Corp. grew in 1934, had been incorporated in 1922, was about ready to start opera tions when Depression intervened. Mean while, similar enterprises achieved an enormous success in Europe. The process (whose U. S. name of Muzak is a trade mark perversion of Music) consists merely of playing transcribed music in a central bureau and delivering it by telephone wires to subscribers who hear it through loud speakers. New York City at present is the sole U. S. spot to enjoy Muzak and ordinary citizens enjoyed it there long before tycoons, because 300 bars, restaurants and hotels have already installed it. Eventually Muzak hopes to extend its service much farther.

Muzak music comes from specially made master transcriptions with an audiocycle range far greater than most radios and minus the surface scratching of most phonographs. This makes the reproduction so faithful that hearers can barely distinguish it from an actual performance of an orchestra. Another advantage is complete lack of announcements, commercial or otherwise, to impede its comfortably spaced flow of tunes. Service is 24 hours a day and all subscribers receive a printed program. Network service costing $25 a month is now taken by such Manhattan spots as the Waldorf-Astoria and Childs restaurants and comes in two types, red which plays dance music steadily from noon until seven a. m., purple which plays light concert music from seven a. m. until 9:30 p. m. and then dance music. Recordings of only the best orchestras and artists are used. Muzak now has 7,500 transcriptions, so no concert selection is played more than once in 18 days.

The service offered tycoons is a new "direct" service which allows a subscriber to pick certain tunes for certain times. Because of its high cost plus the fact that Muzak has yet to make money, radio-makers have yet to worry over its competition. In fact. Philco Radio & Television Corp. once designed a radio cabinet with space provided for a Muzak installation.

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