The Decline of Elevator Music

Do elevators have elevator music anymore? I've been riding in a few elevators over the last few days, and although I didn't take notice of it at the time, none of those elevators had any music playing. Elevators used to be famous for hopelessly soulless, absolutely empty music that theoretically offended no one but, in reality, actually offended anyone who loved music. For years that was epitomized by the Muzak company--so much so that its name became synonymous with the form. But according to the Muzak Wikipedia page (which must be accurate--it's Wikipedia, after all), Muzak has rebranded itself almost completely and is no longer in the business of taking all the feeling out of hit songs. Now it uses the original recordings of songs and licenses them out to various businesses to use in the background. I don't know whether it was this shift in direction or other factors altogether, but that hasn't worked out so well for Muzak. They were losing massive amounts of money and racking up huge debts, and (again according to Wikipedia) announced that it will merge with DMX.

This whole subject was inspired for me tonight by a trip to Walgreens to pick up some prescriptions. As I was ordering them, the store was playing REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It," and I must say that that's a bit disconcerting in the drug store. Is that true? Was I really just at the drug store so they'd supply the I Feel Fine part? If it's the end of the world as we know it, are we medicated to the point that we don't mind? It's almost enough to make you seek out some obscure elevator somewhere that's playing the Percy Faith Orchestra and the Ray Conniff Singers.