It's the only song Alex Cornell has ever written. Cornell was one of the co-founders of UberConference, and in addition to being a designer, is a singer and guitar player who had always found songwriting frustrating. "Then I just came to it one day," he says. "I just wanted to write a pleasant melody designed to be heard over the phone." With encouragement from Walker, Cornell started messing around with the lyrics. He wrote and recorded it in one night, in 2012, as a voice note on his phone — and thus, this self-aware hold song was born, and lives on, seven years later.
Thank you for calling the Accounts Department. We’re sorry that we are unable to take your call at this time, but please leave your name, phone number and a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you. Female Voice Male Voice Guide to On Hold Messages Script Types Business Intro & IVR On Hold Messages & Voicemail Greetings

If it is a genre, hold music, it's fair to say, is a troubled one with few hits. It's not really meant to be loved or even listened to — it's meant to communicate something specific: Don't hang up. (Cornell makes this plea specifically at the end of his song.) Silence is believed to be a death knell for phone calls — people will simply think the line is dead and hang up. This is true even on non-hold calls; it's why phone companies transmit something called a "comfort tone" over phone lines, a barely audible synthetic noise that signals a connection is still there.
Of the 10,000 callers who heard hold music during their minute wait, only 13 percent dropped off, and more than half guessed their wait time was less than a minute. To take it a step further, the study's last group heard a mix of music and messages while on hold for one minute. Two percent hung up. Another 81 percent thought their wait time was less than a minute.