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Escorts Kubota arm Escorts Kubota Finance to begin NBFC operations from November 26By DEE-ANN DURBIN and MANUEL VALDES, Associated Press SEATAC, Washington (AP) — Background music is no longer an afterthought at many airports, which are hiring local musicians and carefully curating playlists to help lighten travelers’ moods . London’s Heathrow Airport built a stage to showcase emerging British performers for the first time this summer. The program was so successful the airport hopes to bring it back in 2025. Nashville International Airport has five stages that host more than 800 performances per year, from country musicians to jazz combos. In the Dominican Republic , Punta Cana International Airport greets passengers with live merengue music. Tiffany Idiart and her two nieces were delighted to hear musicians during a recent layover at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport . “I like it. There’s a lot of people here and they can all hear it,” said Grace Idiart, 9. “If their flight got delayed or something like that, they could have had a hard day. And so the music could have made them feel better.” Airports are also carefully curating their recorded playlists. Detroit Metro Airport plays Motown hits in a tunnel connecting its terminals. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas has a playlist of local artists compiled by an area radio station. Singapore’s Changi Airport commissioned a special piano accompaniment for its giant digital waterfall. Music isn’t a new phenomenon in airport terminals. Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports,” an album released in 1978, helped define the ambient music genre. It’s minimalist and designed to calm. But Barry McPhillips, the head of international creative for Mood Media, which provides music for airports and other public spaces, said technology is enabling background music to be less generic and more tailored to specific places or times of day. Mood Media – formerly known as Muzak – develops playlists to appeal to business travelers or families depending on who’s in the airport at any given time. It might program calmer music in the security line but something more energizing in the duty-free store. “We see it as a soundscape,” McPhillips said. “We design for all of these moments.” There’s a science to Mood Music’s decisions on volume, tempo, even whether to play a song in a major key versus a minor one, he added. “How do we want to affect their mood at that moment?” McPhillips said. “It’s not just like, ‘Here’s a load of songs.’ It’s a load of songs for that 10-minute segment, and then we move to the next 10 minutes.” At the same time, many airports are going low-tech, hiring local musicians to serenade travelers and give them a sense of the place they’re passing through. Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports have more than 100 live performances each year. Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport began a live music program five years ago and now has two stages featuring local artists. Tami Kuiken, the manager of airport music in Seattle, said the Seattle-Tacoma airport launched its live music program about a decade ago after a city commissioner heard live music at the airport in Austin, Texas . “The idea was like, ’Man, why doesn’t Seattle have music? We’re a music city too,” Kuiken said. At first, the airport created a playlist featuring emerging artists along with famous ones like Pearl Jam . Then it decided to try live musicians for a 12-week trial. It was so successful that the airport now features live musicians daily and is building new performance spaces. “People’s anxiety levels are very high when they’re traveling,” Kuiken said. “The feedback that we started getting was that once they got through the checkpoint and they were greeted with music, all of a sudden their anxiety and stress levels dropped.” The programs also benefit musicians, who get paid to perform and gain wider exposure. When Colorado Springs Airport announced a live music program in March, more than 150 musicians applied. It now hosts two two-hour performances each week. David James, a singer and guitarist who plays at Seattle’s airport about once a week, said waking up in time for a daytime gig took some adjustment. But he’s gained new fans from all over the world. “I get really sweet responses from people all the time, saying, ‘That was so soothing to be able to just sit and listen to music in between flights,’” James said. “So it feels like it’s especially therapeutic for people.” Country stars like Blake Shelton and Keith Urban have come through Nashville’s airport and interacted with local musicians, said Stacey Nickens, the airport’s vice president of corporate communications and marketing. Shelton even gave one his guitar. Otto Stuparitz, a musicologist and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam who has studied airport music, said airports should think carefully about their selections. Music that’s meant to be actively listened to – like live music or catchy pop songs – can be very distracting in an already chaotic environment, he said. He has noticed some airports – especially in Europe — turning off piped melodies altogether. But McPhillips said big spaces like airports can feel cold and unwelcoming without background music. “A well-crafted audio strategy is one that people aren’t particularly cognizant of,” he said. “They just know they’re having a good time and that it’s appropriate.” Durbin reported from Detroit.I’m no linguistic purist. My brother and I exclaim “YOLO!” (you only live once) to each other, as in, “I backed into our neighbour’s car, and we didn’t realise our insurance had expired, YOLO!” Or: “Modern life is exhausting. My brain feels like a lab rat owned by sadistic scientists with an unhealthy zeal for electricity. YOLO!” Sometimes I’ll add “AF” to the end of a sentence in front of unsuspecting parents, such as, “I’m tired AF.” (The A stands for “as” and, yes, the F stands for what you think it does. Google it.) Inventing words is old-school, but let’s do it with panache. Credit: Getty Images/iStock So, no, I’m no purist. But I was feeling a little curmudgeonly upon hearing Macquarie Dictionary’s announcement that its word of the year is enshittification . This added to a list of viral internet-speak words that have topped its charts in recent years ( cozzie livs , brat , menty b ). It’s either an attempt to appeal to a younger generation or a depressing reflection of our internet babel, whereby trending words are spat out haphazardly for their 15 minutes of fame, enshittifying the language, like Frankenstein creations. Sure, enshittification is the invention of a bona fide writer, Cory Doctorow. He came up with it last year to describe what happens to social media platforms over time, which is fairly accurate. However, I’m still holding Doctorow responsible for adding to the very enshittification of our language. Loading I know that language is an evolving beast, and evolution can be fun. Just ask my teenage drama students, who fell into hysterical laughter when I repeated the word “skibidi”. I’m still unsure what it means, but I assume it’s some derogatory term for boring adults with health insurance. My great aunt was fluent in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. She would pore over ancient texts like Beowulf , unlocking their meaning, when she wasn’t slipping me a copy of Harry Potter unbeknown to my religious grandparents, who disapproved of it. I often wonder how she would feel about the development of “internet speak” as someone who spent her life immersed in ancient languages, writing academic papers with scintillating titles such as “ Spatial perception and conceptions in the (re-)presenting and (re-)constructing of Old English texts ”. Would she be “skibidi-ing” and “YOLO-ing” with the rest of us, harbouring the knowledge that language is always evolving? Or would she be having a menty b (mental breakdown) in her grave?