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In-store music is regarded as an effective tool of marketing communication and social control. According to the marketing theory appropriately designed music(scape) can mediate two contrary effects: namely approach and avoidance behavior. The first one includes all positive behaviours that might be directed at a particular place, such as a desire to stay, explore and affiliate, joy of shopping, returning, spending money, time spent browsing, loyalty etc. Avoidance behaviour reflects the opposite. What role in thes...

The French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) was a colourful and enigmatic figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. Being active in several spheres of art, in an atmosphere of fin de siècle, he proposed and implemented the concept of musique d'ameublement (“furniture music”). In his vision music was supposed to play an extravagant role (as it was perceived in that period) of an acoustic background accompanying all daily events and not absorbing the attention of the listener. Satie’s idea can be treated...

One of the most famous futuristic dystopia in the literature of the twentieth century is the novel of a British prose writer and essayist Aldous Huxley. "Brave New World" (1932) is the vision of a society that has reached a state of total organization and has achieved the ideal of universal happiness. One of the many tools of the social control in the hands of the authorities is the programmed "synthetic music", which meticulously fills every space. A similar image of background music appears in George Orwell's no...