Ah, the many eras of corporate music. Canyon.mid exemplifies the late 80s / early 90s aesthetic - gets me fired up to optimize my multimedia strategy.
The current era is mostly inspiring 4 chord repetitions with muted guitar and piano, with B-roll of cinematic nature footage and racially diverse businesspeople shaking hands. Also jaunty ukulele riffs with dance claps and some kind of "oh oh ayy-oh" vocal hook.
What creative bounties will the coming decades bring?
In answer to your closing rhetorical, I'd like the throw a curveball: Corporate Businesswave, the genre of truly creative artists riffing on soulless corporate jingle culture. Plenty of 80s/90s aesthetic to go around here. I personally love "Money Can Buy Happiness" and "Mark to Market" by New Century, "Pump and Dump" by Shadow and Mirrors, and "Insider Trading" by Michael Weber.
Thanks for sharing, favorite so far is also "Money Can Buy Happiness".
The song would be perfectly at home in the GTA Vice City soundtrack including lyrics like:
"More is more and less is less, money can buy happiness"
"Life can be so effortless, money can buy happiness"
Probably the most famous example of this genre is James Ferraro's "Far Side Virtual", which can be listened to in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd-uSm8ittU
I work in finance, so this playlist has been highly entertaining, thanks. Especially when one of my trader colleagues pops up on voice chat to unwittingly duet with Gordon Gekko.
The infinite four chord inspiration sound is quite dreadful (shame on you, Hans Zimmer), but I do hope we never revert to the times of KPMG, we're strong as can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvKXgp-Awo. If you haven't heard it, first prepare some ear bleach before you click.
Isn’t the ukulele thing straight from Israel Kamakawiwo`ole’s take on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, or a bleak imitation thereof?
I want my 60s-70s orchestral muzak back. Complete with grainy 24fps footage of sunny cities with enormous futuristic-looking business centers and viaducts, successful-looking smiling people riding those ginormous cars to work. Keith Mansfield, David Lindup, Alan Hawkshaw. Big names of library music.
The synthwave era in comparison sounds somewhat decadent. But I like it too.
For anyone interested in this genre, there is a very large collection of 60s/70s library music available on Spotify. Searching for "KPM 1000" will get you started.
I feel like there was at least one additional generation of corporate muzak between these two movements, but I am slightly too young to really put words to it. I remember bank and tech commercials being full of xylophones and marimbas around the turn of the century. Think the soundtrack to American Beauty. James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual definitely touches upon it too.
Somehow, this made me think of Amtrak when they used a jazz song from the Pat Metheny Group as their radio jingle. That advertisement felt surprising to me at the time, and stimulated oddly nostalgic day dreams about sophisticated train trips that I never actually experienced...
The current era is mostly inspiring 4 chord repetitions with muted guitar and piano, with B-roll of cinematic nature footage and racially diverse businesspeople shaking hands. Also jaunty ukulele riffs with dance claps and some kind of "oh oh ayy-oh" vocal hook.
What creative bounties will the coming decades bring?