Music easy listening free#

This was music for relaxing, for putting your mind at ease, and it could be anything from light classical to show tunes.

According to Media Studies scholar, Keir Keightley, easy listening as a title dates back to the early 1940s, though the “easy” may be in reference to the effort it took to listen rather than a particular style. Though “Music Only for a Woman” wasn’t an enduring format, it did give rise to one that we’re still hearing today- easy listening, though this genre has been around (with different names) for a long time. Like Peters and his Beatles rearrangements, Muzak also relieved pop music of “attention-grabbing vocals, hard edges, grating dissonance, or rhythmic shocks, a “feminine” sonic atmosphere.” This would later be followed by the Good Music radio format in the 1950s, “a full-time radio format aimed especially at women working in the home and uninterested in the current hits on youth-oriented radio stations.” These playlists were then sold to subscribers-first home listeners, but later, mostly businesses. Mood music, which was first packaged for consumers by the Muzak company in 1934, featured “ expertly curated musical playlists hand selected for background functions,” explains American Studies scholar Paul Allen Anderson. Peters wasn’t the first radio executive to try to capture the so-called feminine market. This was music for relaxing, for putting your mind at ease, and could be anything from light classical to show tunes. Women were a market like any other, and as researcher John Wallace White explains, “ The choice of format is usually determined not by musical concerns, but by business concerns.” This format wasn’t particularly concerned with art. However, “Music Only for a Woman” would provide that with a softer, gentler style.

While The Beatles had some good songs, “the arrangements weren’t right for the format,” Peters said. Instead, it would play something akin to the day’s hits but with different arrangements. The music would also be woven in with work by Jacques Wilson, a poet who’d worked on Moog-heavy psych-rock albums, The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds, and The Wozard of Iz: An Electronic Odyssey.Īccording to Peters, it was music for the feminine psyche, “The appeal is a man’s message to a woman,” Peters told Billboard magazine. What if there was a radio format that was just for women? The unimaginatively named “Music Only for a Woman” format would be, according to an article in the June 12, 1971, issue of Record World, “ highly emotional music featuring today’s leading male vocalists.” The format, sold to stations as a pre-taped package, would run for eighteen hours, broken up into three-hour sections with names such as “Precious Moments” (9 a.m.–noon), “Alone By the Sea” (3 p.m.–6 p.m.), and “Soft Whispers” (6 p.m.–9 p.m.).

Music easy listening free#

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.Īn enterprising radio producer named Ed Peters had an idea.