Sad News – The Music is Gone

When I created the start-up help/splash screen for AutoTag, I wanted to make it fun. Business software is so boring. Business reporting software even more so. And we have the great music from Enemy Nations. So I set the program to play this music while the Start Here screen is up. It's a really upbeat, let's go get it done kind of track. And the music could easily be turned off.

But… We had complaints. Some people didn't like the track. I respect that criticism – everyone has different taste. But we also had people tell us that it made the program seem cheap and unprofessional. The final nail in the coffin was when we hired a new intern, and in her review of the software, her first comment was "Music? Really?"

So the music is gone. Not a big deal. But I think business software would be better if more companies did things like this that were a little different. What do you think? Was I totally off-base?

Comments

[Alexandru Lazar]

Yes, you absolutely were off-base. Are you writing a business program, or a media player? This brings me very sad memories from the days when Visual Basic was at its prime and everyone was writing the nth Notepad clone that used Comic Sans for everything.

Of course it would be useful if companies started doing things that were a little different, but on the useful side. The auto industry wouldn't be here if all the changes they had done were related to paint color, polish and cushion shape.