Who Composed the Windows 95 Startup Sound?

The iconic, ethereal six-second chime that greeted millions of users booting up Windows 95 remains one of the most recognizable pieces of audio branding in computer history. Despite being the hallmark sound for a massive corporate operating system, it was created by Brian Eno, a legendary British musician, producer, and pioneer of ambient music. This article details how Eno was hired for the project, the creative constraints he navigated, and the famous irony behind the sound's production.

In 1994, Microsoft designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk contacted Brian Eno to create a piece of music for their upcoming operating system. At the time, Eno was already famous for his work with Roxy Music, his solo ambient albums, and his production work with major artists like David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2.

Microsoft gave Eno an exacting and ambitious brief. The audio needed to be inspiring, sexy, universal, optimistic, and emotional, but it could only last a fraction over three seconds. Eno later described the brief as an adjective-heavy list that seemed impossible to condense into such a tiny window of time.

Embracing the challenge, Eno approached the project like a jeweler cutting microscopic gems. He immersed himself in the world of micro-composition, working with fractions of seconds. In total, he crafted 84 distinct pieces of sound before delivering the final selection to Microsoft, which was eventually lengthened slightly to roughly six seconds. The resulting sound, officially titled "The Microsoft Sound," served as an atmospheric wash of chords that defined the auditory identity of the 1990s computing era.

A humorous and widely celebrated footnote to the story is that Brian Eno did not create the piece on a Windows machine. In a 2009 interview with BBC Radio 4, Eno admitted that he composed the famous startup sound entirely on an Apple Macintosh, stating that he had never used a PC in his life.