Every call placed on hold is a moment when your business speaks for itself, with nobody there to represent it. It is also the most neglected part of most companies' communication: a random track pulled off the internet, whatever generic loop shipped with the phone system, or worse, silence broken by a beep every ten seconds. The person on the line is forming an impression of you right then, and that impression is yours to decide. Here is how phone system audio really works, what the telephone line imposes, and how a proper on-hold production is built.
Several sites, several numbers or customers abroad? The production can include versions in different languages and separate messages for each location or department. Reply within 24 hours.
Most businesses treat hold music as a technical detail of the phone system. It is in fact music played to people outside the company, which puts it in exactly the same family as the music playing in a shop or a hotel lobby.
When a customer calls and waits on the line, they are not listening privately: they are receiving audio content the business is sending them. In that sense a phone system, in its own small way, broadcasts exactly like a speaker in a store. This is why businesses that use recorded music from the repertoire administered by collecting societies and performing rights organisations need to clear their position with those organisations, just as they would for music played inside their premises. The rules and the bodies differ from country to country, but the underlying principle does not. If the wider question of fees is what you are after, we cover it in our guide to what a music licence costs a business.
The second misunderstanding involves consumer listening services. The terms of service of Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Premium and Amazon Music cover personal and domestic listening only and explicitly exclude playing the service to third parties. Connecting a personal account to a phone system breaches the platform's own terms regardless of any other consideration — we set that out in detail on our page about using Spotify in a business. The same applies to a commercial track downloaded and loaded into the phone system's memory: the file remains subject to the rights of whoever produced it, even though nobody is selling anything.
The route that removes the complication is the same one applied to music in commercial spaces: working with a proprietary catalogue produced in-house. What we deliver for your phone system is made by us, under our own editorial direction. It is not a file taken from a third-party archive and resold: it is our own material, written and mixed for the telephone line.
This is where the biggest misconception lives: many people assume on-hold audio needs a permanent stream, a dedicated line or an extra box on the wall. None of that is true. Here is the actual sequence, from file to call.
On-hold audio is a file of a few minutes loaded into the phone system's memory, looping for as long as the call is held. There is no stream to keep alive, no dedicated connection, no technical subscription. It is uploaded once and it keeps working on its own. This is why on-hold audio is, of all business audio services, the simplest one to put in place.
Telephony carries roughly the band between 300 and 3,400 Hz. Below and above that, nothing gets through. Deep bass, sparkle and air vanish; what remains is the midrange. A rich, dynamic track that sounds superb in a shop turns flat, muddy or downright irritating on the phone. Anyone choosing hold music by listening on their laptop is judging something the caller will never hear that way.
The moment a spoken message arrives over the music, the two elements compete for the same band of frequencies — the only one available. If the musical bed is not ducked and cleaned underneath the voice, the message becomes unintelligible precisely when it is saying the things that matter: opening hours, directions, offers. This is audio direction, not two files placed side by side.
Cloud and VoIP systems accept high quality MP3. Many traditional PBX systems and answering machines only accept WAV in the classic telephony profile, 8 kHz mono. That is why delivery covers the same audio in several formats, along with both the complete loop and the individual messages as separate files, so it fits systems that want one file and systems that manage distinct slots.
The files arrive by email. You or your telephony technician upload them through the phone system's management panel, following the guide included. From then on it runs without maintenance. When something changes — a promotion, summer hours, a holiday closure — you replace that single message rather than rebuilding everything.
The technical notes above describe how the most common phone systems and answering machines behave. The exact accepted format can vary by model: the production includes the main formats in any case. To go deeper: our guide to music licensing costs for business.
Plenty of businesses, in an effort not to get it wrong, play nothing at all. It is the most expensive choice, because it is the one that makes people hang up.
The problem with silence on hold is that the caller has no way of knowing the line is still alive. Without a continuous signal, doubt sets in within seconds: has the call dropped? have they forgotten me? should I redial? The natural response is to hang up and try again, which means a lost call for you and a small irritation banked for them. Continuous audio removes the uncertainty at the root: as long as something is playing, the line is open.
Then there is perceived time, which is the more interesting part. Empty time feels longer than occupied time: it is one of the most robust findings in the psychology of waiting, and it is the same reason radio never leaves dead air. Thirty seconds of nothing feel endless; thirty seconds of well-chosen music and one useful piece of information pass without weight. You are not filling a gap, you are lowering the psychological cost of waiting for someone who is trying to reach you.
Finally, there is what the hold can do in your favour. If the customer is already on the line, they are already interested: it is the most attentive audience your business will ever have. Something said in that moment — opening hours, a new service, the fact that bookings can be made online — reaches someone who is genuinely listening. It is the same principle behind audio in a waiting room, applied to a channel almost nobody uses.
There is a precise radio parallel that explains why this work has more in common with radio production than with picking a playlist.
Emanuele Carocci, a radio broadcaster with more than twenty years on air, leads the music curation team at My Corporate Radio. He works every day with exactly the problem a phone system poses: making a voice that must be understood coexist with music that must be present without stealing the scene. In radio that carpet under the voice is called a musical bed, and choosing it is a craft: it has to support the speech, bring energy or calm depending on the moment, and disappear from the listener's attention while remaining perceptible.
One difference makes on-hold audio even more delicate than radio: the telephone band is far narrower than FM. Voice and music are forced into the same midrange, without the low and high frequencies where they normally separate. What radio solves with gentle equalisation demands sharper choices on the phone: material with controlled dynamics, arrangements that leave space free in the centre, and the bed ducked under every spoken line.
This is why on-hold audio from My Corporate Radio does not start by picking a track from a catalogue, but by producing a dedicated edit: music selected from our catalogue to match the character of the business, messages recorded and placed at the right intervals, the mix calibrated for what the telephone line actually carries. The same craft that sits behind radio, applied to the most underrated channel a business owns.
A law firm's hold cannot sound like a fashion retailer's. Four archetypes and the sound direction that fits each.
Restrained and authoritative. Instrumental, flat dynamics, no vocals. Callers usually have something serious on their mind: the audio should convey order and competence, not entertain. Messages stay essential and informative, with no sales tone.
Warm and considered. Soft lounge textures with a recognisable character from the first second. This is often the very first contact with the property, ahead of the website: the hold should sound the way the lobby sounds. Multilingual versions belong naturally here.
Consistent with the brand. If a certain musical character plays in store, the phone should carry it too: it is the brand's sonic identity continuing on another channel. The hold also works well as informational space, for hours, locations and seasonal news.
Professional and neutral, built for waits that may run long. Material that survives repetition without becoming grating, with messages that genuinely help: queue status, alternative contact channels, support hours.
Three well-written messages cover almost everything a business needs. The fourth is the one nobody prepares and everybody ends up wanting.
The first contact: company name, thanks, reassurance that someone will answer. It has to be right, because it is the line the caller hears repeatedly if the wait stretches, and a poor read becomes grating by the third loop.
Where you are, when you are open, what can be done without calling. This is the message that measurably lightens the phone load, because a share of calls exist only to ask what can be answered here.
The one that plays out of hours. It has to state clearly when you reopen and how to leave a contact, otherwise the call is simply lost. It is also the message updated most often through the year.
For businesses with international customers, the same messages can be produced in several languages and alternated within the loop. Callers from abroad hear the information in their own language, without anyone translating on the fly.
A phone system is a broadcasting device: music played to callers is not private listening, it is content delivered to third parties. Businesses that use recorded music from the repertoire administered by collecting societies and performing rights organisations need to clear their position with those organisations, exactly as they would for music played inside their premises. My Corporate Radio works with a proprietary catalogue produced in-house, outside those repertoires: what we deliver for your phone system is made by us.
No. The terms of service of Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Premium and Amazon Music cover personal and domestic listening only and explicitly exclude playing the service to third parties. Connecting a consumer account to a phone system breaches the platform's terms regardless of any other consideration. The same applies to a commercial track downloaded and loaded into the phone system memory: the file remains subject to the rights of whoever produced it. We cover the topic on our page about Spotify in a business.
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. On-hold audio is not live radio: it is an audio file loaded into the phone system memory that loops for as long as the caller waits. No dedicated connection, no extra hardware, no maintenance. It is uploaded once and it keeps working.
All of them, because the same audio is delivered in several formats. High quality MP3 for cloud and VoIP systems, which accept standard files. WAV in the classic telephony profile at 8 kHz mono for traditional PBX systems and answering machines, which only accept that profile. The delivery includes both the full loop and the individual messages as separate files, for systems that handle them in distinct slots.
The telephone line carries roughly the band between 300 Hz and 3,400 Hz. Deep bass and high end simply disappear, and what survives is the midrange. A rich, dynamic track that sounds great in a shop becomes flat or harsh on the phone. What works is material with controlled dynamics, no sudden peaks, the melody sitting in the midrange, and the voice always clearly above the musical bed. It is a dedicated mixing job, not a file pulled off a shelf.
You or your telephony technician, following the guide included with the delivery. Uploading takes a few minutes from the phone system's management panel. No technical intervention on your equipment is carried out by us: we produce and deliver finished audio.
For a single business the production is a closed piece of work, with one price and no compulsory subscription. For companies with several sites, several numbers or international customers, the production is organised to fit.
For chains, hotel groups, businesses with several numbers, separate departments or customers abroad.
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Curated music and courtesy messages, produced for you and delivered ready for the phone system.
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More guides on music in business spaces and audio communication.