background music

So I was examining the Blackberry Curve at work and naturally had my machine on mute.

This was sometime yesterday. Fine.

I come into today, however, and decide I want to listen to music on my work machine. Fine. I pop in my headphones and start listening to Last.fm. Oddly, there is this wobbling background music in some of the samples. I start to think, "Wow, what an insidious way to protect your samples ... put a mostly indiscernable but incredibly annoying underlay."

Then I stop playing samples though, and the background music DOESN'T GO AWAY. I start to get quite confused, and begin to anger at the RIAA wondering if they have some kind of crazy deal where anyone who listens to samples must be punished for a certain number of hours or something. Finally I realize that I have another browser open (this is how many windows I usually keep open.. sometimes they get lost) and that it's the Blackberry site making the most insipid background music I've ever heard.

Two thoughts - 1. Don't put background music on your websites. 2. Background music might be a viable way to release free songs into the wild.