Pull off those headphones! Turn the volume control on your PC down to zero! Muzak, the bland band noise that leads people to run screaming from department stores, is planning to make it big on the internet, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company acknowledged that a change of image may be necessary. Next to Spam, we have the most negative brand identity in the world, said Alvin Collis, Muzak’s programming director. The company is certainly not short of ambition. As an internet music broker, it thinks that it could end up as the next MTV. It has started licensing pieces of songs from music companies and pumping them out to web sites. It also sees a role as a broker in the growing online music business, acting as middleman for consumers to download music from retailers’ web sites to their hard disks.
