Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. In the original liner notes to Brian Eno’s founding document of Ambient music — 1978’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports — the artist explains that he named his genre after “an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint.

Source: Brian Eno’s Ambient Album Music for Airports Performed by Musicians in an Airport