On-hold audio messages to be played to callers to a business telephone system who are waiting to be connected to a desired party are transmitted over the Internet to a plurality of computers at separated locations. The on-hold messages are downloaded into USB drives at each of the second computers and the USB drive is then loaded into the USB port of a digital message unit. A microprocessor in the digital message unit interrogates the files to determine the file structure and creates a file directory in the microprocessor. Operator controls allow the selection of a particular file which is loaded from the USB drive into the digital message unit where it is decompressed and converted into analog form to provide the output to the on-hold input of a business telephone system.