eli5: Why hasn’t the audio quality of “on hold” music improved in decades?

Question

eli5: Why hasn’t the audio quality of “on hold” music improved in decades?

In: 934

Answer 1

It’s because the actual total quality of phone calls themselves has actually decreased over the years. Phone companies have crushed bandwidth down to what barely allows for human speech to be understood. Music of any complexity can’t sound good in that situation. It would probably actually sound better if they used MIDI music.