Something that every composer who writes library music needs to remember to do before finalising a song is to simulate how it will sound over a tinny phone earpiece. I hear way too many songs in the wilds where tracks drop out because they can't be properly compressed into an 8 KHz sample stream, such as basses that go too low or drums that were mixed too softly.
Admittedly, you're probably going to have a hard time simulating hold music in your DAW, so you'll need to use Audacity as a middleman. Use your stereo mix to stream the song directly into Audacity so you don't have to spend half your life clicking into file directories, then apply the following procedure.
1. Stereo track to mono. Combine the stereo mix into a single, monaural track.
2. Compressor. You don't have to change the default settings, but make sure "Compress based on peaks" is clicked.
3. Equaliser. Use the "Telephone" preset to rob your song of its low and middle frequencies.
4. Resample. Change the sampling rate to 8000 Hz.
5. Nyquist prompt. Create a Nyquist bitcrusher using the formula, "(quantize s 24)". The higher the number, the less bitcrushing is done. 24 is low enough for our purposes.
6. Leveller. I don't know where in the newer versions of Audacity the leveller went, but older versions have this option, to "bullhornify" your audio. If you don't have this setting, perform another Compressor. Otherwise, use the "Heaviest" setting.
Now, connect a pair of consumer-grade headphones to your computer and observe the output. This can be regarded as a reasonable approximation of how people will hear your song if it gets used as hold music. Assume that people will hate it immediately and will make snide comments about how bad it is for the full length of time that it is audible. Why? Because people never have to hear hold music unless they're on hold with a large corporation for some reason, usually because something went wrong with the automated gatekeeper and they need to wait to be connected to a real person. Their stress level is high and their tolerance for hold music is low. It doesn't reflect on your abilities as a composer, it's just the way it is.
--2 June 2023--