http://nowiknow.com/music-in-the-key-of-k/ From the 1970s and into the 1990s, Kmart was a retail behemoth in the United States. Half department store, half discount destination, the chain was a great place for American consumers to go to get virtually anything — clothes, home decor, toys, VHS movies and music on tape, greeting cards, random tchotchkes, and over time, even food. At its peak in 1994, there were nearly 2,500 Kmarts throughout the country. But times have been tough since. Feeling pressure from Target, Walmart, and of course, the Internet, Kmart has gone through two bankruptcies and an ill-fated merger with Sears. Today, there are fewer than 100 Kmart stores remaining. ...
Unless employees needed to make an announcement via the store’s public address system, guests were treated (or subjected to, depending on your taste) to what Vice described as “ephemeral muzak [ . . .] that was created [ . . . ] to keep shoppers from ever accidentally confronting silence.” ...
It turned out that the Kmart radio network wasn’t actually transmitted via radio — the music was sent to stores by the corporate headquarters on cassette tapes. And when new tapes arrived, the old ones often made their way to the trash. That’s when Davis stepped in, as he told NPR:
So it was my first job, and I was working for Kmart. And I was on the sales floor. And these songs rotated, like, every hour or two. And so you’re working a lot of eight hour shifts and weekends. You get to know these songs. You actually get to like the songs to a certain extent.
So I had access to the service desk when I had first started. And I went behind to take a look at the sound system ’cause I’m a technical guy and wanted to see how it worked. And I noticed that it was November, and there was an October tape sitting there. So I decided to take it as kind of a memento to my first month working at Kmart. I continued this collection every month.
Archive here: https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers