A novel reason for forced music in publicly accessible space

The ongoing degradation of publicly accessible space in the UK continues. For many years I've been concerned about the rise of piped music in third places: you basically have to pay to be in public without artificial noise.

Back in the days when I used to organise meetings in public places (pubs, cafes, bars, hotels, college rooms, etc), it was a constant problem: the spaces were run in a manner clearly intended to *prevent* serious conversation. The main way this had a negative impact was that you couldn't really organise a meeting indoors without having to obtain your own room, as otherwise the piped music from elsewhere in the venue would interfere with conversation.

Obviously, if you are trying to have a speaker address an audience, this is an even bigger problem.

Ten years ago I was already running into the problem of staff refusing to silence the speakers in rooms we'd paid to hire exclusively. They gave revealingly dishonest answers about why they "couldn't" or shouldn't do this.

But here in the doctor's surgery, the waiting room had piped commercial radio in the waiting room. When I asked for it to be turned down they refused on the grounds that the music was necessary for patient confidentiality, as it made it harder for people to hear what staff were saying. Yeah, right.