Institutional Music
On Soul Sucking Systematic Mysterious Adventures in Musical Voids
Warren Zevon’s shit may have been fucked up, but my metadata is messed up.
When a songwriter’s metadata is messed up, it means they don’t get paid, because there is a complex system in place where royalties flow like honey from reporting systems to collecting agencies, and if the codes that are linked to identify a song and a writer and the recording of the song don’t match up, the system doesn’t know how to pay out that royalty.
Metadata gets easily lost or messed up by human admin errors, typos, missing apostrophes, information input by people that don’t know the full data story of a song, old publishers that refuse to waste their time to let an agency know they no longer represent you, things like that. I have been trying to get help to change my name being listed as “Leone” rather than “Loene” on one song for years (one of my only songs that actually generates a tiny bit of money), but despite assurances the request has been made, it never happens. There is no recourse for me to do it myself, so I remain permanently frustrated, and whatever small monies I should have earned on that song, get placed into what is described as a ‘Black Box’ of unmatched royalties that can’t be paid to the rightful owner. And that is only one of my many tedious metadata dramas.
After sitting in a black box for three years, currently there is 2.5 billion dollars in said box, this sum of money is shared out among the major publishers. I find this state of affairs very unfair and depressing, and consequently lose a couple of days to creating spreadsheets of missing/messed up metadata and requesting the agency that represents me correct it, getting confirmation that has happened, only to check back few months later to discover it hasn’t happened, and the cycle starts again. If I had access to get in there and doing it myself it would all be so simple.
This excellent article by Joel Gouveia explains it all very throughly:
Anyway. I’m digressing before I even start this week’s Loose Connections, because what I really planned to tell y’all about was that in the process of analysing data and making spreadsheets, I found out that I have a couple of songs that are earning tiny royalties from a place I’d never heard of: Securus Technologies -according to Google ‘a US-based company that provides communication services to correctional facilities — prisons and jails. They offer phone, video, and digital services to inmates and have a music streaming component as part of their tablet/entertainment service offered to incarcerated people’.
Somewhat ironically, one of the songs is ‘Lonesome Beauty’.
I was intrigued and dug in. Currently there are 1.8 - 1.9 million inmates in the US. If they are in prison that has a contract with tech provider Securus, they will be given a tablet preloaded with a music library featuring over 10 million tracks, vetted for a correctional environment and explicit language. They can also watch TV shows, send and receive emails and make calls.
I found this scam on YouTube that encourages independent artists to pay $300 to a company who will give them a downloadable .pdf detailing how to get their music onto the Securus system. It’s kinda worth watching for the hilarious animations.
I thought this tablet communication system sounded pretty humane and was quite impressed, until I dug a bit further and discovered that Securus charge for every stream, every download, every email, every call, making it completely unavailable/useless to many inmates, who earn under one dollar an hour - and according to anecdotal evidence I found on Quora, as little as 12c per hour.
Spotify, Apple Music etc are not accessible in the prisons; inmates pay for individual songs and charges vary from state to state.
This Prism article on exploitation of the prison system by private technology companies reports that in Washington, it costs anywhere from 99 cents to $14.99 for an album, while in Missouri, the majority of albums are priced between $1.51 and $25.93.
An incarcerated journalist in Missouri, Patricia Trimble, told Prism that to download a compilation album “By Your Side” by Intel Music, with 80 songs; at $1.91 per song, would cost $152.80.
Prism also spoke with an incarcerated writer who said using his tablet cost him around $300 per month and he was only able to pay that with family support. Securus generated $438,000 commission on music sold to inmates in Washington (the DOC also receive a 25.8% commission on tablet services), during the first three-quarters of 2023.
The tablets often malfunction or simply don’t work. Inmates report receiving emails weeks after they were sent from the outside. Often they can’t place a call, and it is difficult to get through to the service line for Securus - if they do make contact, there are reports of inmates being subjected to a serving of racial abuse by the operator and not receiving the assistance they need. Photographs, along with books and other writing in the ‘Notes’ type software on the tablets will often just disappear. These devices cause a lot of frustration.
Legislation changes in 2023 have allowed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to limit the cost of prison calls nationwide. Until 2025, according to the Wall St Journal, a 15 minute phone call from a large prison could cost $11- it now costs less than $1, and in California, Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts and Minnesota, calls are now free. So maybe there’s hope the institutional system is improving, but I don’t really expect those hopes to be well placed.
I am reminded of strolling though the aisles of the Freshway supermarket on Highway 19 just outside of Zebulon, Georgia where my family and I stayed for a while, and discovering an entire aisle devoted to Institutional Foods, where shelves groaned with oversized cans as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head full of baked beans, okra, mashed potato, corn, peas and mystery meats. I thought it was hilarious to feel like I was in the Land of the Giants until I had the sobering realisation this food was to service the nearby prison, and probably local schools and aged care homes.
On a brighter note, while strolling the aisles of IKEA (OK, yes, hopelessly lost in the endless maze of IKEA), I was struck by the samey-soothing tones of the piped music, and couldn’t help wondering where their playlist came from - so, like any curious person would, I Shazamed every tune that played for the next half hour and discovered that none of them existed in the ‘real world’.
Now I was really curious. Did IKEA commission their own soundtrack from affordable, innovative Swedish producers? This would probably make sense for them to do, because any public place that plays music to its customers has to purchase a not-cheap license to do so. Producing their own music would be a smart IKEA hack!
I was surprised to discover how impossible it was to find any information about this. I found articles about a fantastic program IKEA ran in 2024 where employees submitted music they created for a chance to win a trip to record with fellow winning employees from all around the world in Atlantis Studio in Stockholm, where ABBA recorded many of their hits. “IKEA has given us an outlet to express our talent, our gifts”, commented Cristle from IKEA USA. There is a Spotify playlist featuring the top 15 acts from IKEA Talents but sadly this programme seems to have been a one-off venture, and the tracks on this playlist sound nothing like the hypnotic ambient murmurations that accompany a trip to IKEA.
I tried to describe these sounds myself, but I feel this obviously AI generated description I weirdly came across on Ali Express does the job better:
IKEA commercial music blends Scandinavian-inspired ambient tracks and soft pop to create welcoming retail environments. This curated soundscape, featuring Nordic influences and slow tempos, enhances customer dwell time, reinforces brand identity, and complements products like thermostatic wine cabinets. By aligning music with IKEA’s philosophy of better everyday life, the brand transforms shopping into a cohesive sensory experience that subtly guides behavior and strengthens emotional connections. …. This musical strategy is not just background noiseit’s a strategic tool to evoke emotions, guide customer behavior, and strengthen brand recall. For example, IKEA’s in-store music typically features slow-tempo melodies that encourage shoppers to linger, explore, and engage with products. This approach mirrors the brand’s emphasis on thoughtful design and long-term value. While the music itself isn’t a product, it indirectly influences how customers perceive IKEA’s offerings, including items like thermostatic wine cabinets. When paired with a sleek, modern wine cooler, the ambient soundscape enhances the overall experience of curating a home bar or entertainment space. To replicate this effect at home, consider how music and furniture can work together. A thermostatic wine cabinet, for instance, becomes more than a storage unitit transforms into a centerpiece for gatherings, complemented by curated playlists that match the mood of your living room or business space.
Do you suddenly feel the need to purchase a relaxing thermostatic wine cabinet?
The only other comprehensive information I could find about the sound of IKEA was from an advertising agency that created an IKEA campaign blending ‘Scandinavian charm’ with found sounds from “the squeak of a children’s chair to footsteps on a doormat and the soft thud of a rug hitting the floor, every sound felt instantly familiar”. This is described as ‘sonic branding’. Ouch, sounds painful.
It was supposedly a viral hit - according to the agency itself: The success wasn’t a subtle thing, it garnered a reach of 50M on TikTok (5x more than 2021 Oscars eyeballs), 41,000+ People used the “Build the Flatpack” track on their TikToks and UGC. Overall people spent SIX YEARS of viewing time interacting with Ikea’s Summer Festival idea (52K Hours) and created 285M Streams (A Double Platinum record!) of this track and its many spawned sound-alikes, UGC, and send ups. 43 Creators made 2.2M engagements and 248.3M views out of the simple idea of a Gen Z rallying cry around creating a better home space for your mental wellbeing and singing about Ikea’s flatpack contribution to it. Because, well… home is where the flatpack is.
All very impressive, but we are still no closer to knowing where The Soothing Sounds of IKEA really come from!
Next, I turned to Reddit, where people who knew things revealed what they knew:
Hello, I wanted to give you some more information as I am an employee for Ikea (Sales) and I also love the music a lot. At each Ikea store there is an employee called a “Customer Experience” worker who is pretty much in charge of cultivating the culture at our stores. I’ve worked two different stores and have badgered the customer experience people, one of them even went so far as to ask corporate. The answer I keep getting:
“We dunno”
Most likely this is something that’s only known at the Global Corporate level. Ingka Group most likely didn’t anticipate people would be so interested so the information was just not relayed to the various subsidiaries in the USA/Canada/etc
Please keep asking for it, whether through feedback channels or at the store etc.. the more people ask about it the higher demand there is and the more likely it’ll get through to someone that has the answer
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IKEA headquarters have seemingly addressed the question only once, on Twitter:
Comments about the instore music from IKEA co-workers include: [–]LowerTheExpectationsFormer Co-Worker[S] 2 points 4 years ago
….We had bulletins about it in the employee area of the store and people wrote all kinds of negative comments on it, how “it’s shit” and how it makes them “lose the will to live.”
Another comment stated:
“It’s very bland, generic and makes you feel like time is standing still. I’ve heard negative comments from customers as well but since they come to shop primarily, the question of whether they like music doesn’t really come up that often. So after a questionnaire on the new music that us employees got to fill out the response from the Swedish was basically that regardless of our negative opinion the flavorless, soul-sucking music was here to stay.”
Seems about right.
Stay weird friends, fuck the systems, make art etc, I know you know what to do, or you wouldn’t be loitering here in Loose Connections with me!
Fuck the algorithm too, press the heart for me, or engage by sharing, commenting blah blah to help me rise above the system that is annoyingly gate-kept by interaction data.
Excuse all my very rude swearing today, spending time inside the worlds of metadata, prison exploitation and innocuous corporate/human exploitation just brings it out of me!
But nothing but love for all y’alls,
Lo x
A very interesting small corner you covered in today's post. The large scale vanilla layer descending on much of the arts is also something to concern us all. An abundance of over the top political correctness, A.I laden media, corporate absorption and far right politicizing is enough to drive anyone to a few fruity expletives in frustration. An even more pointed reason to celebrate the independent artists and musicians struggling within this morass.
Let's exhume Johnny Cash, rebuild him as the Six Million Dollar Prison Man with Chat GPT. Take him out on a 12-month Lo & Johnny tour of North America’s finest penitentiaries. Half the show is outlaw country. “Lonesome Beauty” for the inmates, “Thermostatic Wine Cabinet (Remix)” for the wardens. A 27-minute encore medley of unreleased IKEA ambience in E Minor.” Somewhere in the distance, a metadata clerk sheds a single tear and accidentally misspells your name again. If that doesn’t unlock the black box royalties, put me in an institution. Love those weekly Loose Connections. Keep the faith. Lo and behold, I salute you.