Synopsis

Play Music On Hold indefinitely.

Description

   MusicOnHold([class])

Plays hold music specified by class. If omitted, the default music source for the channel will be used. If you have configured MusicOnHold in musiconhold.conf it will get played automatically if the extension is put on hold. This command FORCES musiconhold music.

The default MusicOnHold class is set with the SetMusicOnHold command.

Example

Extension defined in extensions.conf with "forced" MusicOnHold. Remember to Answer before letting the music pour down the line. Otherwise music on hold will not work correctly.
   ; Answer required as Music On Hold does not answer the call
   exten => 6000,1,Answer
   exten => 6000,2,MusicOnHold()

It is often useful to turn off music on hold in several situations:

1. when a particular extension calls (originates)
2. when connectiong to a particular extension
3. when traversing a particularly expensive network
4. when connecting to a conference

(So, how do we do handle each situation?)

You can turn off MOH on a per call by using the SetMusicOnHold command.

Add a new class to musiconhold.conf
   [none]
   mode=files
   directory=/dev/null

Create a macro in extensions.conf to turn off MOH
   [macro-nomusic]
   exten => s,1,NoOp(Turn off MOH for this channel)
   exten => s,2,SetMusicOnHold(none)

Now call this macro when you dial an extension
    exten => 7020,1,NoOp(Dial -> IAX2/outbound/${EXTEN})
    exten => 7020,n,Dial(IAX2/outbound/${EXTEN},,M(nomusic))
    exten => 7020,n,Hangup

play-fifo (3rd party addition)

This small C program will create if necessary, open and listen on a fifo for slinear audio and delivers it to STDOUT. If STDOUT is blocking, it discards the data. The idea is that you would use it in a custom class in res_musiconhold. Now you can use whatever means you choose in a seperate process to deliver raw 8khz mono slin to the fifo which will be heard as the music class fifo. An example would be to play your line-in into the fifo and the buffer will not overflow because this program does a poll on the STDOUT and discards STDIN when STDOUT is busy.
You can find it here, it is not part of the Asterisk distribution.

See also

• MusicOnHold Configuration
• Asterisk cmd SetMusicOnHold
• Asterisk cmd MP3Player
• Sounddogs Royalty Free Music
• FreeMusic Free Classical Music (seems down)
• Signate Free Music On Hold Free Classical Music on Hold in MP3,ULAW and SLN
• BMI Commercial Music Licenses
• Using ffmpeg to convert Music On Hold files Convert to WAV and u-Law PCM in one step using ffmpeg
• Using Slimserver for Music on Hold: How to use a local or remote slimserver for your Music on Hold
• Asterisk MoH Patch How to play native file formats in asterisk
• StarTel has a large collection of MP3's suitable for Music on hold

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Asterisk | Configuration | The Dialplan - extensions.conf | Dialplan Commands | Sound files