Hold music cannot be found in the wild. It exists only in captivity, looping in the fluorescent enclosures of customer service systems, and no complete specimen has ever been observed: it is always joined mid-phrase and abandoned mid-phrase, a creature composed entirely of middles.
The song itself resists identification. There is a piano, or something that remembers being a piano. There is a saxophone that enters with great confidence and goes nowhere. Researchers who have attempted transcription report that the melody cannot be recalled even seconds after exposure, a defense mechanism, perhaps, against being hummed. What distinguishes hold music from all other music is its relationship to time. A symphony carries you somewhere. Hold music holds you, precisely and perfectly still, while somewhere far away your call advances by one. It does not entertain. It certifies. Its actual message, beneath the synthesizer, is simply: you have not been forgotten, though you have not been remembered either. Periodically a voice interrupts to say your call is important, and the music resumes, unoffended, from no particular place. Field recordings suggest the average adult will spend some weeks of a lifetime inside this enclosure, aging gently against a backdrop of smooth jazz. Hold music is the only song that has watched you age. It will be there after the merger, after the rebrand, after us. Estimated wait time for its extinction: longer than expected.