Depending on your temperament, hold music can leave you simmering with barely constrained rage or lulled into a dopey state of compliance.

According to a professor in music therapy, the dreaded phenomenon was originally introduced simply as a way to “district and entertain” people on the other end of the phone while they were waiting.

“It sounds like a simple match but it is complicated,” Professor Katrina McFerran from the University of Melbourne said. 

“You might have a very diverse selection of people who are calling and therefore it can be very difficult to choose music that’s not going to be annoying to anyone.

“I think it is [also] intriguing to ask why one would try and play music that’s surely going to be very annoying for a lot of people.”

Professor McFerran, who was talking through some typical hold music examples with ABC Radio Adelaide, said it had evolved over the years, from low-fi digital melodies that sound like they could have been created on an 8-bit computer, to recordings of famous symphonies.

“‘Eighties pop music seems to be all the rage for all kinds of music and it obviously pleases a lot of people,” she said.

“Western classical music can get up people’s nose because they find it a bit elitist.

“But in another way, the psychology of playing bad music has been shown to be quite effective as well.”

Professor Katrina McFerran says hold music often has no beginning or end as a tactic.(Supplied: Professor Katrina McFerran)

There was the much-publicised example of The Wiggles’ Hot Potato being played on a loop at a music shell by the City of Bunbury as a way, it said at the time, of “discouraging people to congregate permanently in an area and to deter anti-social behaviour”.

Studies have also shown how playing western classical music at train stations can work to move on  would-be loiterers.

“There have been other studies where people use dance music with a fast beat to get consumers in shops to move quickly through,” Professor McFerran said.

“If you’re at a restaurant and they’re playing really energetic music, sometimes that’s because they want to keep a bit of pace about things. 

“They don’t necessarily want you to relax. They’ve got the next round of seating coming in.”

How this all translated to hold music took little imagination from ABC listeners, who texted in their experiences about engaging with one of Australia’s most notorious services for putting people on hold, Centrelink.

“What REALLY gets my goat with hold music, is bad music and then the message that says, ‘Please respect and speak kindly to our operators,’ when the music just increases the blood pressure and makes you grumpy during the hour you’re waiting! Centrelink is a case in point.”

“If you have to put incoming calls on hold … you are not employing enough staff!”

“I always get a giggle when I’m in a certain hardware chain store and the piped music cycles to the U2 song, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’.”

Other tactics in play

Professor McFerran said deciding on verbal messages that interrupted the music, such as, “Your call is important to us”, could be equally tricky to ensure frustrated people did not take offence.

There was also thought put into ensuring the music did not have a definitive end or start, helping to reduce the sense of waiting too long, or simply so people sitting through it could not say, “I’ve been sitting here for two songs”. 

Organisations might also consider the image they wanted to project through their waiting music.

“The Lollipop song is a perfect example,” Professor McFerran said.

“It’s probably a very annoying song but it’s sweet and it’s in context and therefore it says something about the organisation itself, so there’s a lot of support for authentic representations in music.”

But finally, it came down to how much an organisation cared, and what they considered was worth investing in.

“If you’re going to keep people on hold, I would have thought trying not to make them angry, would have been one of your primary goals,” Professor McFerran said.