For Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency and author of Sound Business: the manual for creating effective sound in business, sound is important. He was interviewed recently for a radio programme on “sodcasting”, to be broadcast in June. This made him think deeply about the issue and led to the following article which should resonate with a lot of readers.Sodcasting is defined by the online Urban Dictionary as: "The act of playing music through the speaker on a mobile phone, usually on public transport. Commonly practiced by young people wearing polyester, branded sportswear with dubious musical taste." I think we need to widen the definition from the much-berated hoodies on the bus genus (let's call this form "territorial sodcasting", because it's very akin to dogs and lamp-posts in its motivations) to include all thoughtless inflicting of noise on other people. One person's "dubious musical taste" (aka noise) is another person's delight. It's well documented in field trials that those same teens who enjoy tinny renditions of N-Dubz or Eminem find the public playing of classical music unbearable enough to move away from it – which is why it is deployed at over 100 London tube stations and in many other places around the UK to move them on and to reduce vandalism. So is that "state sodcasting"?
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This wider definition brings in some many other perpetrators. Though far less obvious than the gang at the back of the bus, they can be equally annoying to those around them. I tweeted the other day in real pain from a quiet airport lounge where around 30 people, all modestly and sensitively minding their business and controlling their noise, were forced to listen to one end of a phone conversation from a man who clearly thought he had to speak loudly enough to reach the UK from Germany without the help of modern technology. While most people murmur into their phone in public, dismayed by the very idea they could be overheard in an unintended bond of intimacy with those around them, there is a breed (is this perhaps genetic?) who unashamedly broadcast like this without a shred of awareness of their imposition on their neighbours. I think we can call this "white collar sodcasting". (One even more irritating refinement of this behaviour is pacing, especially with a wired headset: the unwanted conversation swells and fades with predictable frequency, so that the dread of its certain return compounds one's simple irritation into a sort of exquisite torture.) Then there is "in-car sodcasting" (or should that be "ex-car sodcasting"?), a practice taken to the extreme with insane 20,000-watt car stereo systems, but sadly perpetrated all over the world by enthusiastic amateurs who confuse aggressive domination of other people's soundscape with their own self-worth. These are not the same thing, guys. Please get some therapy, grow up and enjoy your music in private, with the windows up. And there's more… what about "mechanical sodcasting"? In my book I quote the estimate from the EU noise-mapping project that one noisy scooter driving through Paris in the middle of the night can wake as many as 200,000 people. That's a major piece of sodcasting. Its less impressive (but far more widespread) relatives include leaf-blowers, hedge-trimmers, power tools and the like. We're not done yet. "Domestic sodcasting", aka neighbour noise, is a major social issue, and it kills people. Not the noise itself, but the ensuing arguments, which (especially when added to alcohol and firearms) have all too often ended in murder. Just last month there was the tragic case of a man who strangled his own daughter in a row about TV noise, but there are so many of these sad events, including the 2008 case of the Cleveland fireman who shot dead three people because of firework party noise. Duration, repetition and intensity are all aggravating factors in these disputes. Which brings us to the big one: "commercial sodcasting". I don't mean sodcasting for money: thankfully I don't believe there is any money to be made by imposing unwanted noise on people. I do mean commercial organisations thoughtlessly broadcasting noise of all kinds. That's thoughtless as in completely unconscious (noisy vehicles, chiller cabinets in supermarkets and cornershops, squeaking trolleys, checkout beeps) - and equally, thoughtless as in conscious but unconcerned with the consequences (mindless music in shops, restaurants and other public spaces). I have blogged elsewhere about the commercial pressures for this latter practice: the music industry is desperate for the cash and public performance is a rare revenue growth area. In most cases, shops play pop music for no better reason than that every other shop does it too. It's become a meme. Fortunately for pressure groups like Pipedown and their high-profile proponents such as Daniel Bahrenboim and Peter Maxwell-Davis, the science shows that companies can make more money by designing appropriate, pleasing soundscapes for commercial spaces (just like aural wallpaper, and including careful acoustic design) than by playing pop everywhere. We can therefore hope that the mindless music meme will die out soon. The motives for these various forms of sodcasting may differ, but there are two necessary factors in all cases. First, lack of listening. As I have recently said in my TEDxDanubia talk, people are losing the habit of listening to the world, and especially to other people – and if you don't listen, you simply are not so conscious of the effects of your own noise on others. Second, lack of empathy. In my view, this is directly related to the first factor: if we don't listen to one another, we won't understand one another's realities and so we can't empathise so well. I suspect it may also be a byproduct of the modern, internet version of connectedness: we choose to care about the friend we're on the phone to, while ignoring completely the effects of our loud conversation on the people sitting right next to us. Perhaps our empathy is becoming selective and routed through the web, instead of naturally being bestowed on the human beings around us. The solution? Legislation is not the answer, and nor is citizen power, as anyone who has ever approached a sodcaster to ask them to stop will know all too well. I believe the heart of the solution is in teaching listening skills in schools. If we teach our children how to listen properly to the world, and especially to each other, they will understand the consequences of their own sound and be far more responsible ion making it. Sodcasting is a symptom of societal deafness. Let's collectively open our ears and start being responsible for our sound environment. Julian Treasure – For more on this, tune in (but not loudly in a public space) to BBC Radio 4, 1:30pm, 14 June.Want to discuss other issues? Join the debate on our new Scottish Voices forum
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