What genre of music is this?
 

There is a certain type of music that I hear sometimes and I wonder if it has a name. You often hear it in local advertising or in industrial training videos. It's a very generic, always instrumental, stock music kind of thing. It's mood is very happy, always lots of trumpets, upbeat tempo.

It's a curious thing because I'm old enough to know that nobody has EVER listened to this at home or at a party. You hear it all the time but it's nobody's favorite. It would be very silly to dance to.

You probably know what I'm talking about, but do you have a name for it? The last time I heard it was at the local movie theater in the ad they play to sell popcorn and soda.

Fuzak?

Thanks for the suggestion. When I googled 'fuzak' related stuff, I got a lot of things that were sort of jazzy and arguably interesting. You do see a lot of that stuff on 'hold' music.

The music I'm talking about is even more generic. It's also over the top happy and inspirational. Not that it's inspiring, but you can tell they are trying to inspire you. It's a 'life is great, go team go' kindof thing. It's a 'today we are going to learn about safety' kind of thing. I'm struggling to think of famous examples. Lots of brass, but not an ounce of swing.

Ok, I found an example. Check out the music on this training video. I wanted to post a link, but I'm too new to the forum.

google 'Lockout Tagout SafetyTraining Video'. The youtube video code is dX6K4jRBRe0 (you can actually just google the code and the video will come up.)

I have no idea; I think that's just what royalty-free music samples tend to sound like. (..Bad, in other words.) There's a ton of them on this site: Royalty Free Motivating Corporate Music (The samples on that particular page are very similar to movie theater waiting music.)

I do find they vary a bit depending on the decade:





The modern-day kind tends to be a bit more intense (at least here in America where nature documentaries and commercials geared toward men have to be EXXXTREME with over-the-top sound effects)

Yes, that first example you posted from 1990 is exactly it! Of course, nobody listened to that stuff in the 90's intentionally, but it was and still is everywhere. Yes, 'Royalty Free Music'. We think of it as bad, but maybe we just don't get it. Maybe there is a science to this stuff, and that an expert would be able to know which of these is good or bad and for what reasons.

It's definitely a weirdly fascinating thing to ponder. I found this book on the subject; I tried to find some excerpts online but there aren't any, sadly.

Also found this: Attention K-Mart Shoppers | MetaFilter
Apparently someone took it upon themselves to digitize various 1980s-90s Kmart playlists. (Finally!) Most of it is just bad 80s pop but it still may be worth sifting through.

I found another perhaps more well known example. The opening theme song from She-ra princess of power. Try to dance to it. It would have to be lots of high kicks or some martial arts related thing.

Here is the youtube number. Google wR65P73X5GI.