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About a decade ago, London Underground began piping classical music into some tube stations to deter petty crime and anti-social behaviour. The scheme was deemed a success.

There are a couple of possible interpretations of the success:

1. Classical music had a calming effect that dampened anti-social behaviour.

2. (A bit more depressing) Classical music is so uncool that anyone with anti-social intentions didn't want to hang around in a station while it was being played

Here's a 2008 article from The Independent newspaper on the scheme: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/featu...

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Generally classical music has more dynamic range than popular music, some passages are barely audible, while others are explosively loud, so I think they are a bad fit for noisy public places. Also many classical works wasn't composed as background music, but rather as music that itself is the centerpiece of a performance, and thus they do need more attention from the listener, rather than remaining in the background of things.

Dynamic range compression and compensating for ambient noise (many car stereos do this) works well.

Last year the metro in São Paulo - Brazil, started playing classical music inside the trains and stations and no one understood why.

Makes sense since they always try to copy stuff that worked elsewhere, but I've seen more people mad at the decision than supportive of it.

Is that because it's perceived as being annoying to listen to or are they aware that their actions are trying to be subtly manipulated?

As an aside, it was actually Newcastle's Metro that pioneered this tactic in the UK, back in the late '90s..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4710426.stm

Just adding as I was there at Uni at the time and there was a distinct dissonance hearing classical music playing in some of the bleaker stops.

Give criminals time to adapt. Then they'll have to come up with a new genre.

Would death metal actually _increase_ crime rates I wonder?

Seems unlikely. Events where metal music is played generally have lower crime than other forms of popular music.

My evidence for this was the general lack of interest from the London police at metal events, although it seems[1] that could be a way to measure race without asking — the metal scene is overwhelmingly white and also more middle class.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/10/police...

Have you ever met any death metal fans? They're not exactly a burgeoning criminal fraternity :)

A third perspective that I’ve read from someone who claimed to live near one of these implementations was that the music was so loud, it didn’t matter what it was. No one wanted to stand around such an obnoxious noise source.

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