[philwelch]

Despite this trend, maybe it’s just me but I have never actually experienced elevator music. As in music playing in a literal elevator. Sometimes there’s a TV with weather reports and sports scores and “fun facts” that pop up but no music.

[gumby]

Those TVs in elevators and fuel pumps are evil. You can look away from the screen but the voices make it hard to think.

[zeta0134]

The ones in fuel pumps are the worst. In my town I make a point of avoiding any gas station that has sunk to that level, but they seem to be harder and harder to avoid especially when traveling.

[smush]

YMMV but at least here in the southeast USA, the default GSTV signal can be turned off by pressing a combination on the 4 soft touch keys on the outside of the screen. If your buttons are like so,

1 | CONTENT | 5

2 | CONTENT | 6

3 | CONTENT | 7

4 | CONTENT | 8

try the sequence 5 6 5 . Here where I am at, that mutes the sound. Sometimes 7 8 7 also turns the screen off.

But! You need to put it back to screen on, sound on, or the staff will notice and you risk them changing the combination on you.

[zrail]

Around here it seems like I just have to push one button to turn the sound off. Presumably it comes back for the next customer but I have no idea.

[philwelch]

The elevator ones I’ve seen are mostly silent, they just have a cycling static display. The gas station ones are a fucking abomination though.

[AlphaWeaver]

Some of these can be muted by pressing one of the buttons, they're just not always labeled.

[michrassena]

At the gas station I frequent, there are buttons around the periphery of the screen. One of these mutes the audio, making the necessity of refilling gas at least a little less unpleasant.

[JohnFen]

It's been a while since I've heard elevator music as well, although it used to be ubiquitous.

How ubiquitous? I worked in a hotel once, and even the cargo elevator (used by all employees) had it. Oddly, the speaker wires would get mysteriously snipped on a regular basis to make it stop. That would work for a couple of days until maintenance got around to reconnecting things.

[shantly]

I recall multi-floor department stores employing actual elevator music in their elevators 20+ years ago. Haven't been on an elevator in one recently, so can't comment on whether they still do it.

[creaghpatr]

Elevators have gotten really fast now, it probably made sense for 70+ story buildings where you might be on the elevator for more than 60 seconds back in the day but many modern elevators are going 10 floors/sec at their max speed.

[yellowapple]

10 floors per second? Assuming 1 floor = 1 story = 3.3 meters, that's highway speeds.

Really fast indeed.

[mattkrause]

They're not quite highway speed, but still pretty crazy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-surpri...

Peak speed: 18 m/s (40 mph)

[weaksauce]

the last time i heard elevator music was many, many years ago. seems like it was a thing in the 80s-early 90s department stores.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It mostly died out when the tape machines[1] it was played on were replaced with satellite and internet services that offer licensed commercial music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ