Story Time

This week’s Story Time is brought to you by the good people who placed me on hold for almost an hour this week… Thank you for that… It gave me time to embrace my ADHD brain and look up this bit of juicy information and a story about that earworm of a song that everyone knows from being placed on hold. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click below and have an Aha moment. The story goes a little something like this.

“The song is called Opus No. 1, by Tim Carleton and Darrick Deel. It’s never been on a Top 40 list or gotten radio play, yet it’s heard worldwide by the millions of people who are placed on hold each day. Darrick and Tim’s story actually begins back in 1989, when, as teenagers and friends, they recorded a song in their garage. Unfortunately, they didn’t go on to rockstar fame and fortune, but years later, Darrick would take a job with Cisco. In building Cisco’s first version of IP phones, he was aware of Cisco’s need for a piece of music to use as the default hold music for the new system. Cut to several years later, and their high school composition has become the hold music for the world’s most popular phone systems, with over 65 million IP phones sold. With that, Opus No. 1 has left the safety of Darrick and Tim’s childhood recording studio and entered earworm status.”

Kind of crazy to think about. This song is getting millions, perhaps billions of plays throughout its lifetime, and no one is collecting royalties for it… Or maybe they are. Read more about it on - Cicso’s Blog.