Music sounds better with you...

Or so the song goes...

I love my music, and I use iTunes to store and play my music.

Casting my mind back to the few times I've worked as part of a team in an office environment, music was always a contentious area, and in one case, the boss of one company who I used to do contract work for actually banned the radio.

To me, this made perfect sense.

"Ban the radio? But why?!", I hear you cry.

Because the radio is usually a fuckin' pest, that's why.

So once you've all decided which station you want to listen to .. which typically starts out cheerily enough but soon descends into venomous exchanges; one staff member slagging off each other staff member about his / her 'lesser' musical tastes, and witheringly bitter remarks about social standing and the like.

You somehow manage to placate the likes of me who never, ever listen to the radio .. typically because it is an unsavory collection of vacuous 'pop' tosh, punctuated with derisory DJ talk-speak and other assorted auditory diarrhea with all of the entertainment value of watching a pair of side-ironed, bry-nylon trousers drying on a clothes line.

You've all agreed a truce on one weekday when you all get the chance to bring in a tape or a CD of your own moozak that everyone else has to listen to .. but only ten songs each, and begrudging loud speaking and the obligatory: "Will you turn that bollocks down?! I'm on the phone!" are to be kept to a minimum.

After all of that...

There's the inevitable: "Oh yeah! Turn the radio up, I like this song.", sez one staffer.

"What? It's shit! Turn it down!", sez the other staffer.

Meanwhile, overall productivity tumbles and work suffers and the wheels come off the poorly held lines of the office truce and you're back to square one.

So this article really did bring back all of the troubles I've had the pleasure of witnessing over the years.

Music isn't just about personal tastes. In the work place, the like or dislike of a particular genre / group / artist / song can either make you or break you...