So while this loss of quality is fine for regular conversations where it's just people speaking, if you're planning on piping music down the telephone line, you need to remember that the audio quality will, at best, be around 24 times worse than what you'd hear on a CD.
Length – if your callers typically wait 2 minutes at a time, then at least 2 minutes of programming should be the goal. The idea is to ensure the callers don’t hear repeated messages every time they call. A typical on-hold message is 4-8 minutes in length.

On hold messages and ads are growing in popularity, but there are still plenty of businesses in Australia that don’t realise that their phone is a marketing tool. Think about it – having professional and marketing-driven on hold messages is like having a really great salesperson on the phone with your customers every time they call.
The word “Ringback” is perhaps unfairly associated with a niche market of cell phone users. A ringback tone is a signaling tone that the caller hears while the phone is ringing. In America, the tradition has been to have a two second tone with a four second pause, mirroring the two second ring and four second pauses on the other end.