"Noise" is everywhere. This may be a truism; however, what makes the idea of internoise compelling is precisely that personalised music listening in urban spaces entails that silence is replaced with noise, i.e., if music bleeds through our headphones or we play music on our smartphones without regard to the well-being of others in our vicinity. Drawing on Jacques Attali's assertion that "nothing essential happens in the absence of noise", I intend to explore public spaces as arenas that are truly inter-noise in that sound always replaces sound and that we are between noises rather than between noise and silence. Building on this, I go on to discuss Thomas Hylland Eriksen's suggestion that modern (information) age creates new forms of vulnerability. To this end, I offer a reading of this statement in the light of Marie Skanland's theory of the use of MP3 players as "musical self-care" and as a means for empowerment and agency. This opens for understanding music in public spaces as "aesthetic control", creating relationships between the individual and the environment, but also as a bridge between noises, where noise always takes on the function of defence against other noise.
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